Wednesday, December 30, 2009

A Brand New Journey

Welcome to my very first blog post. This moment has spent a lot of time swimming around in my head, and I am finally ready to start. You may be sitting at your computer asking yourself, "what is he hoping to accomplish by blogging?" I have three very simple goals, and they are:

  1. Inspire people with disabilities (and without them, of course!) to go out and achieve whatever they want, regardless of what anyone else may say. Never accept "no" as an answer! If you want it badly enough, it is completely possible.
  2. Give my readers (This means you!), disabled or not, an intimate look at what it is like to overcome the challenges of being a college student with a disability. Of course, it won't just be about the difficulties; college is about a lot more that just that!
  3. Finally, this blog is not just for my wonderful readers; it's also for me! This is a place for me to get my frustrations, thoughts, and whims all written down. With any luck, this will be as much fun for you to read as it is for me to write!

Now I suppose you would like to know a little about me. Well, I'm a Sophmore at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU). My current major is English Education, but by next year I hope to transfer to Lesley University in Camebridge MA to major in Special Education and Creative Writing.

My hobbies and interests include, but are not limited to, writing (one of the biggest motivators for my starting this blog), reading urban fantasy among other things, sitting at coffee bars long into the night, listening to "strange" bluesy-style music like Regina Spektor and CocoRosie (not so bluesy), and shooting black and white photography, much of which I hope to put up on here with my blogs.

Is there anything I forgot to mention about myself? Oooh, right! I am a 19 year old boy/man/guy with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), a form of Muscular Dystrophy (MD). When I was younger my spine was crooked, but I have a set of lovely stainless steel rods inside of me that straightened that problem out. Other than that, my range of motion in my arms is not great, and my muscles aren't very strong, and I'm in a wheel chair. I don't know that there's much else to tell you - my brain is not affected by the disease, and a pet peeve of mine is when people treat me as though it is.

The last thing I suppose you should know about me RIGHT NOW is that I have a fantastic service dog. His name is Jasper, and I have had him for six years. He's an eight year old golden labrador. He helps me with picking up things off of the floor, turning light switches on and off, and taking my socks off (I have the bite marks on my toes to prove it!). He's simply adorable, and I will certainly have some pictures of him up here soon.

So, I suppose that is all I can really talk about right now. My hope is to make this a weekly blog, and get some of my photographs up with each post so you have something to look at. There's only one question left: who is going to read this?!

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