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    John Elder Robison explains life as an Aspergian

    “If this trac­tor would have sex with you, would you get rid of your wife?” Augusten Burroughs

    “Well pos­si­bly, or maybe for a freight loco­mo­tive.” –John Elder Robison

    I love this. I wish I could get my sis­ter, Andrea, to explain in writ­ing what it’s like to be a per­son with intel­lec­tual dis­abil­i­ties. That, how­ever, would be a much longer YouTube video. :)

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    Stay Hungry

    I am not feel­ing too well tonight, but NaBloPoMo must go on. I’ll keep it short though.

    I sched­uled 3 esti­mates for paint­ing the room today. Two of them did not show up on time. One never showed. In the mid­dle of it all my neigh­bors son revealed a des­per­ate need to work. He, like many peo­ple out there, is strug­gling and work­ing through it by throw­ing lawn equip­ment into the back of his Dodge Neon and ask­ing to mow lawns to break even. Lucky me, he’s been laid off from con­struc­tion. SERENDIPITY in Action!

    Prim­ing starts tomor­row and he’s tak­ing on the project. the pros who didn’t have the finesse to show up to a sched­uled appoint­ment to get busi­ness need not apply. When you’re hun­gry you don’t take any­thing for granted. The hunger for work is a rare but good ethic to carry into any sit­u­a­tion. Stay hun­gry my friends.

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    What was I thinking?

    I started prim­ing the grooves of my pan­el­ing today. About 6 grooves later, I was exhausted and really over­whelmed. The wood sucks up the primer like a sponge.

    I’m embar­rassed to admit this, but I gave up. I put down the paint­brush, logged into Angie’s List, and sched­uled esti­mates for paint­ing the entire room. The first one is tomor­row morning.

    It’s not that I couldn’t do the project. Phys­i­cally, (if spread out over a cou­ple weeks) I could man­age it. How­ever, I only planned to paint one wall. There were still 3 more walls to go. The prospect of barely fin­ish­ing the project only to still have 3 walls remain­ing leaves me defeated. I would hold a paint party if there weren’t so much room for error with the paneling.

    Maybe the expense is worth it. We don’t use the room now– It’s 4 walls and a ceil­ing of dark dreary wood pan­el­ing. Chang­ing it into a bright room that is fin­ished out and usable could make a huge dif­fer­ence in my men­tal out­look and could inspire changes to other areas of the house.

    We’ll see if my cheap side wins out or if my defeated un-painting self gets the bet­ter of me.

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    Painting Slippery Surfaces & Other Quandries

    Ok, yes. I was laid off on Fri­day. I’m sure this will pro­vide me with plenty of mate­r­ial to write about once I fig­ure out what the heck hap­pened. I’m still pretty shell shocked (which sur­prises me) so instead of deal­ing with the real­ity of it, I’m pre­tend­ing I’m on an extended dream ‘hol­i­day’ taken with my fab­u­lous imag­i­nary Euro­pean vaca­tion days (don’t they get a month or more?).

    To make the most of my illu­sions of grandeur, I’ve taken on a project that has turned out to have a sim­i­lar scale of hal­lu­ci­na­tion: Paint­ing. I intend to trans­form ONE wall in my house into a happy thing to stare at. sounds easy right? Wait, wait…Here’s the catch: I picked the most dif­fi­cult wall there was.
    Painting Panelling November 2009

    This is not your ordi­nary wood pan­el­ing. It’s not par­ti­cle­board. It has 1/4 inch-deep routed grooves every 4 inches. It’s shel­lacked, stained wood. It’s old. It’s dingy. It’s knot­ted. It’s real wood.

    Did I men­tion it’s real wood? This is why the whole room is still in this cur­rent state, 3 years after we moved in. The guilt over paint­ing real wood has been debilitating.

    But now that I’m newly lib­er­ated from 45 – 50 hours of my pre­vi­ously planned weeks, I am look­ing at this guilt in a whole new light.

    I’ve been dumped, and so I’m dump­ing the guilt. Some­times we need a whole new jolt in our life to real­ize that the things we hold onto based on ide­al­ism some­times become things that hold us back and keep us from grow­ing. It’s a painful les­son, but one I’ll be rein­forc­ing with every painful brush­stroke in those dingy routed pan­el­ing grooves.

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    How often have I thought this…

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    Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

    Today I found myself with a lot more time on my hands than I’m used to. I pre­fer not to go through the details right now, but the cir­cum­stances leave me won­der­ing how I will fill my upcom­ing days. Thank­fully, National Blog Post­ing Month starts Novem­ber 1. There is my cue. So, plan on hear­ing much more from me in the com­ing days.

    I’m excited to get back to my pas­sions– con­nect­ing peo­ple to causes, empow­er­ing peo­ple with social media and dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and restor­ing my sense of won­der through cre­ative activ­ity.  Will you join me in this adventure?

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