Updates

I don’t actually know what I want to write about today. I have a lot of things I can talk about. A lot has happened in the last two years. We settled in to our house. My oldest graduated High School and started College. I formed a great group of close friendships in my small group at church. I wrote most of a thriller novel and have a solid outline for a sequel. My two youngest children were diagnosed with autism. I built a family hub app that I’m pretty proud of. My aunt died. My dog died. A friend I’ve had for 18 years died. My wife became a business owner. I’m sure there’s more. The point is, a lot of life has happened. It’s been a very full two years.

So, I don’t know what I want to talk about. I’m not even sure I want to talk about some of it. The autism, for instance, I hesitate to talk about that. Not because I’m ashamed of it or want to keep it private. I actually think it’s incredibly helpful for parents of children with autism to hear stories from other autism parents. Every kid is different and the challenges of helping a child with autism can be really isolating. But I hesitate because it’s my kids. I don’t want other people to form opinions about them before they meet them. That’s not fair to them. And while being the parent of children with autism is part of my story, it’s also part of their stories. If I put it out on the Internet then their stories are out there, and some day they may not want people being able to know all about their neuro-divergence and struggles from a search engine query.

There are other things I really want to talk about, but I need to figure out how I want to frame. A great example of this is my shifted opinions on Apple, Microsoft and Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS). I actually think this is a whole series of posts because it is actually far more philosophical than it would seem at first blush. I guess I could always start writing about several of them and see what happens. I won’t let the fear of being an “impostor” stop me from starting.