Every Brain is Beautiful

(cross posted)

My first published novel is for sale. The novel is in the genre of social science fiction. One of the themes is criticism of psychiatry.

A game to test each player's ability to identify common logical fallacies and cognitive biases in psychiatric beliefs.

Web address: http://shimmersplash.livejournal.c…19.html.

Event: Weekly meeting of the Mad Students Society (no connection to Scientology)

Just a quick note to let you all know that the "live" date for the official Neuropride website is being pushed back to July 1st. It's been a chaotic month both for myself and my web designer, and we want to make sure we take the time to get plenty of content for the site and get it really looking polished before making our official debut. I'll have it sooner if I can, but it's looking like it'll be at least a couple more weeks, just in terms of coordinating my schedule with that of my web designer. I'll keep you all posted.

[Cross-post from my personal journal, regarding distributing neuropride flyers at the local Whole Earth Festival]

Ended up doing the Neuropride flyers at Office Max. They had a good deal going on. Spent some time at the Whole Earth Festival, and handed out a few. It's the first night, and by the time I got there with the flyers, the shops were closing up and it was mostly dancing and music going on. Which was cool. The flyers are great, but still pricey enough that I want to be selective about who I hand them out to, and I'm not really up for approaching random people who may not care about it and pushing this on them. My approach: I wore my Kimberly Trip T-Shirt, with their song lyric "I'm Not Quite Right in the Head" prominently on the front, along with a couple of buttons including a Disability Week button that reads "Proud to be Atypical. And the flyers were in a clear bag, with the Neuropride logo showing. People there are checking out unusual ideas and expressions already, so people are looking for weird stuff and expecting to see it, there. When someone complimented me on my shirt, I thanked them and offered them a flyer, explaining that it was about neurological diversity. It seemed to go pretty well, and I got the hang of how to do so smoothly after a repetition or three. It was a light and mellow crowd tonight, so I only passed out about 5, but I only printed 40, and that rate seems appropriate if I'm going to be passing them out all weekend as it gets busier there.

When I got tired of it, I walked home. That's a long walk. I definitely got my exercise for today. Resting and re-hydrating now. Hit my saturation point a bit earlier than I expected, socially, but I still did pretty well I think. Gives me an idea of how to pace myself throughout the weekend. Looking forward to spreading the message this weekend, and maybe getting some folks interested in the t-shirts as well. I feel like I'm doing good work, and I'm happy. :)

By popular request, I've created a flyer to promote the Neuropride concept. Feel free to download it and print and distribute as many as you like. If there's anyone who can convert it to a .pdf file instead of a .doc, that would be great, and I'd appreciate the help. Thanks!

[EDIT: Got it as a pdf... thanks so much, wildchildfbnbg! Yes, it's 2 pages... designed to be printed front and back on a single page, but if you'd like to just print out 1 page or the other and distribute that, that's okay too. Whatever works. :) ]

In working on the glossary of terms for the neuropride website, I'm developing a new definition for a disorder that neurodivergent individuals may often suffer from. The proposed disorder is to be called "Social Conformity Disorder", and it is the result of an individual with fundamentally divergent neurology attempting to adapt their behavior, language, and thought patterns to the social standards of neurotypicals when this is not consistent with the orderly functioning of their own neurology. One goal of my efforts in the neuropride movement will be to petition for this real and often debilitating condition, that afflicts a large portion of the neurodiverse population, to be officially recognized in medical literature.

The effects of this disorder can include depression, anxiety, and anger, as well as decreased functioning in social settings, in academia, or in the workplace, as a result of attempting to force themselves to function in a way that is inconsistent with their fundamentally divergent nature. A neurodivergent individual that does not suffer from this disorder has achieved a state of comfortable adaptation to society in a way that honors their fundamental divergence, often capitalizing on the assets of their divergence to the mutual benefit of themselves and society, so as to compensate for the ways in which their divergence may function as a hinderance.

For a neurodivergent individual, attempting to force oneself to behave as a neurotypical can result in a legitimate state of disorder, and this should be recognized as such.

Will crosspost to asperger and to my personal journal.

In working on the glossary of terms for the official website, I've established a definition for standardized use of the word "disorder", and I will be replacing it with the word "divergence" in the cases where a condition does not seem to meet my criteria for a disorder. Thus, Attention Deficit Disorder would be properly termed Attention Deficit Divergence using my system of nomenclature. In light of this, and to reduce confusion, I'm altering the list of conditions that heads the Neuropride Message by reducing the mention of Attention Deficit Divergence to AD(H)D, and adding Cerebral Palsy to the list as was recommended, now that there's room.

And speaking of the T-Shirts, so far three have been requested, and no donations have yet been received. Both more T-Shirt requests and more donations will help to get the message out more quickly. As a review, here's how the process works.

To request a Neuropride T-Shirt, simply send me an email at indigowombat@indigowombat.com with the words "Neuropride T-Shirt Request" in the subject line. Include in the body of the email the number of T-Shirts you would like, the size or sizes you are requesting (adult sizes S through XXXXL available), and the mailing address you would like the request to be mailed to. All requests will be fulfilled as funds become available.

To help fund this project you may make a donation to me, via PayPal, half of which will directly go to cover the costs of producing and shipping the T-Shirts and the other half of which will go toward establishing the organization through which I intend to expand my advocacy efforts for all forms of diversity tolerance and empowerment. The latter half may include personal compensation to me for my time and effort spent on this project (within certain limits), if I determine that the project can support it. When you donate $20 or more per T-Shirt requested, you may request that your T-Shirt(s) be expidited, in which case they will be guaranteed to be included in the next batch of T-Shirts produced and shipped. A non-expedited order will be fulfilled as funds become available through donations and other sources. If you would like to donate in excess of this amount in order to help spread the message more quickly, your contribution will be appreciated.



Yes, this organization I am creating will take the form of a church. Churches have some advantages and some disadvantages at the task of supporting humanitarian causes, relative to other types of non-profit organizations, just as neurodivergent individuals have some advantages and some disadvantages at certain tasks, relative to neurotypical individuals. It would be nice if we could have access to the advantageous aspects of this organizational structure, just as many causes which are more conservative do. There are many non-profit organizations which support the neurodiversity cause, but there seem to be few if any churches that support it substantially. I'd like to help fill that niche. A Religious Left seems called for as a strategy to help counteract the social influence of the Religious Right. I offer the community my services in this regard.

I hope we can get lots of people wearing this T-Shirt and spreading awareness of neurodiversity to those who may not have encountered the idea. If their first contact with the idea is in a positive light, that social impact will be most beneficial toward the process of claiming the right to be socially accepted for who we are.

Thanks.

Based on the thinking I've done today, I'm going to modify my original goal of writing 10 glossary entries for the neuropride site every day this month. 5 entries a day is more realistic; I misjudged the sense of scale as far as number of words per entry, so 5 entries a day should yield the same amount of actual content that I was originally planning on. Today has mostly consisted of creating a list of terms to create glossary entries for; I've got 32 terms in my list so far, although some of them may be combined into single entries. I'm sure as I write up entries, ideas for more terms will be spawned in the process, as I search for words to use in order to describe the existing terms. I've also done a great deal of thought and planning on the structure and theme of the entries. Thinking about it globally like this, rather than forcing myself to break it down into pieces in a way that might not feel natural to me, is more helpful for the way my brain processes. After a locked post by azalynn in asperger, on the topic of optimal learning processes for those with AS, I received more validation and certainty that I should go with the way my brain naturally wants to attack this project, for maximum effectiveness. Which makes even more sense considering it's a neurodiversity-themed site. ;)

No actual entries written yet today, but I think I have almost 5 that are nearly ready to come out. They're still all turning over in my head and being refined, though, prior to being actually written out. I'll try to let them evolve as much as I need to. I hope it's soon, for the sake of creating as much content for the site as possible in the time allowed, but I know that when I allow my brain to work naturally, the output comes prodigously when it does start flowing, so I'm not too worried.

Crossposted to my personal journal.

What do you feel is the greatest asset of your neurodiversity? Or assets, if you don't want to limit yourself to just one.

For me, it's the focus and persistence granted to me by AS. How about you?

Crossposting to asperger.