Still Learn and Grow

When I was a child, I would make up little tunes in my head. I played outside in the creek by my neighbors house or climbed the tree in our front yard. I sang all of the time (prompted or unprompted) but these little tunes were very private. I rarely let anyone hear them because, like many of my thoughts as young autistic child, I didn't think anyone would understand them.  To be fair, my child self had a point. The songs I wrote didn't make any sense. They were about the stupid things I wanted, like finally declaring my love for my second grade boyfriend after my parents told me I was too young to be dating anyone. Or working in the concession stand at a baseball game instead of watching it (this is while my dad coached baseball; I got bored pretty easily). I thought I was going to be the next Hannah Montana or Billy Joel's hype man. It was a dream that was my own and no one else's to crush. The TLDR: the worse I got bullied in elementary and middle school for things o...

I love genius lyricism, and as a child of the aughts, I find myself going back to music I would hear on the radio or on my mom's iPod. Moreover, I'm amazed at how often the lyrics become proverbs of my daily life. Recently, a lyric from "Hey Ya!" by OutKast has been trending on social media: "Y'all don't want to hear me, you just want to dance." Andre 3000 (the genius that he is) uses it to back away from his heavy lyrics about people in unfruitful, unhappy relationships and jump back into the contagious joy felt in the rest of the song. It's beautiful and heartbreaking how self aware the Andre 3000 is. He knows that millions of people were not going to download this song and dance to it at weddings for the next two decades for depressing lyrics in a seemingly peppy song. I never read into this interjection at the beginning of the second chorus, but people are artfully inserting it into their conversations about justice and inclusivity. It resona...

A self-portrait titled "Trying my best" The start of 2021 has been chaotic. Upon writing this blog, I finished a degree recital with limited attendance, entered the back end of the most academically intense semester of my college career, and mended my broken heart of two months–as you'll see, each of these are important in illustrating my plight as an autistic college student. Spoiler alert: absolutely no one has their shit together, and I'm glad we're learning to stop trying to pretend like we are. For anyone that is relatively new in my life, I will attempt to sum up my experience as an individual with (incredibly poorly titled) "high-functioning autism." All of my life, I have been able to excel academically while trying to learn common patterns of behavior among neurotypical people. Individuals have recently described me as emotionally intelligent and outgoing. In all honesty: long periods of distance have stepped on my confidence. I'm getting th...

While I was scrolling through Facebook, I heard a devotion from one of my bosses–now also a pastor–from my ol d summer camp. He spoke on texts related to Jesus and young children, particularly the ever-so-famous " Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these (Matthew 19:14, NIV)." Even though I wasn't in a particularly "theological" mindset, I paused and listened. I hadn't listened to a sermon since Christmas, and I thought it would be great to listen to a familiar voice. He was scrolling through a set of older camp photos, long before my time as a counselor. And as he was speaking, he asked the listeners to recall a time where they had nothing about a curiosity about the world and just wanted people to share in their delight. I started to think about the kids I counseled, and how they were experiencing the thrill of meeting brand new people and just getting to see people experience a new plac...

This photo is from a lecture in the class "Hidden Figures in Early Christianity" discussing the behavior of the dominant voices in antiquity, particularly public artwork representing other nations as sad, passive women holding up strong men. I thought it was relevant. All artists have a purpose. The most influential artists have power. Most of us are comfortable with this sentiment. The most impactful artists have an agenda. This is what troubles the casual listener. During my time in Nordic Choir this last year, we had the unique experience of preparing a full-scale oratorio titled "Considering Matthew Shepard," a work describing the tragic story of the murder of a young gay man. Harder yet, the work discussed the aftermath of the media, the backlash, the confrontation, the forgiveness, and the desire to move forward. As performers, doing this work was difficult. Many of the LGBTQ+ members of Nordic Choir reflected their own emotions about their worldly exper...

Here's the tea: the decade challenge is too dense for me because I'm in my late teens. Of course a lot has changed since 2009 because I went through (and survived) puberty. Good meme, good meme. As I close the door on my third semester at Luther and lounge alone in my couch until my parents get home from their adult jobs, I write this blog in attempt to not rewatch the last season of Schitt's Creek or eat all of the cookies left over from my mom's birthday party. Merry Christmas everyone. I stay active on social media, but I close of many parts of my life to the world. It's not because I'm busy (although that doesn't help). Many aspects of my life are painful to talk about. Yes, I know the old phrase "It's not about how many times you fall down, but how many times you get back up." But 2019 has been a slippery set of stairs. I've progressed beyond the points where I fell, but I still feel my bruises with every step. I felt unrea...

PC: Charlie Langton Matt Walsh, an influencer who credits himself as a voice for the young, religious right, posted a blog on the DailyWire with this title: "You Get Your Own Name. It Can Be Whatever You Want. But You Don’t Get Your Own Pronouns." His rationale can be summarized in these points. 1. The new pronouns such as "ze" are fabricated and make no coherent sense. Pronouns other than he/she are grammatically incorrect. 2. People don't use pronouns when they speak directly to a person, so the concept of using correct pronouns does not make sense anyway. 3. People genetically don't exist outside of male or female, so there is no reason to use these pronouns anyway. He claims that the reason that he argues these points is, "Nobody can provide any proof for any of these claims or any coherent answers to any of the questions I have posed. We are supposed to just accept their assertions, however incoherent, and timidly cooperate as they mutil...