The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Wild Card => Topic started by: jay-ell on March 22, 2013, 03:43:15 pm
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I just wrote my obituary. It was suggested to me recently that in order to choose a direction in life, it's often necessary to figure out where you want to end up. So I wrote my NYT obit. I thought you guys might want to read it, and I would find it interesting to read y'alls as well.
July 28, 2072
JayEll, author, media magnate, and autism advocate, died Thursday evening in her home. She was 93. She is survived by her husband, her children, and five grandchildren.
JL's media company, Aut Nation, Inc, began in the mid-teens as a handful of personal blogs, aggregators, and static resource pages that were mainly directed at parents whose children fell on the autism spectrum. Over the next two decades, she successfully launched three monthly e-zines in succession to serve the wider ASD community. AutFamily came first, marking a sea change in the way autism has been defined in the mainstream media. Indistinguishable on the surface from other successful, family-oriented magazines of the day like Family Fun, Parenting, and Kiwi, AutFamily set itself apart by tossing out the standard "ages and stages" curriculum and giving parents the tools and support they needed to meet their children at whatever level seemed appropriate, regardless of age.
AutLife, first published as a quarterly in 2020, was the first national publication produced by and for individuals on the spectrum, and by 2025 its masthead read like a who's who of autistic thinkers and advocates of the day. The emergence of AutTeen a few years later successfully bridged the gap between AutFamily and AutLife. Many of today's top aut-rights advocates first found their voices as young adults writing for AutTeen's regular guest features. "The opportunity to write about my experiences transitioning to college as a teen with Asperger's was life-changing for me," says Aspie Autberger, an early contributor to AutTeen. "And I know that my work helped hundreds of other young adults with their transitions, too -- I have a file cabinet full of letters to prove it."
JL also published several lesser-known works in the field of Labor History, focusing on the administration of the Department of Labor's Women's Bureau in the mid-twentieth century. Her interest in women who advocated for labor rights seems to have influenced her choices as an activist for autism awareness.
JL first became an advocate after her own children were both diagnosed with autism in the late Aughts. She realized when they were young that their diagnosis would not keep them from success, but that unless autism became more widely understood, they would find doors closed to them nonetheless. She described in a 2051 interview how she began AutFamily out of a feeling of frustration with the mainstream parenting media's preoccupation with achievement and the pathologization of alternative forms of intelligence. "Every magazine I picked up told me that my kids were broken," she said. "But when I looked at what they were capable of, what their friends with ASD were capable of, what adults with ASD were doing in the world, I didn't see anything wrong. What I saw was an intelligence that we should foster, not because it is better than the standard way of thinking, but because only when we combine the two perspectives can we truly learn to see the world in all three dimensions."
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I think this is potentially a valuable thing to do, with the caveat that you want to use it to take the next few steps, but not be too stuck on it. Because sometimes the path can lead somewhere you don't expect that is even more interesting.
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Yes. Clearly, I am not going to be pissed off if I don't have an obit in the NYT when I die. (I mean, I'll be dead anyway.) But writing out how I want to be remembered is actually a pretty useful way of figuring out what my values in life are.
Do I want to be remembered as a housewife who worked part-time at a board game store and occasionally wrote video game reviews for no pay?
No.
So why the hell am I spending my time doing those things?
Time to figure out how to take a step or two towards the things I want to be remembered for -- carving out a space for kids like my kids to be valued, productive members of society.
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Here lies Asherdan - You GODDAM kids still need to keep your ass off his lawn.
[serious reply later]
At the entrance to my ziggurat there will be a bronze plaque next to the eternal flame: HERE LIES ACAP. HE DID WEIRD SHIT TO MONEY THAT NO LIVING MEMBER OF HIS FAMILY UNDERSTANDS OR APPRECIATES. HE DIED JUST AS HE LIVED: ALONE
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He tried everyday to get the most out his life so he could best help people he cared about get the most out of theirs. He didn't believe in short cuts. He spent the money that he saved up. He wasn't a particularly huge Strokes fan but he did enjoy their first album.
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I wonder sometimes if I'd rather die fighting or die having come to some kind of peace.
I am having trouble knowing what I would want on my obit. I would like to be a person who cares less about what people think about me, much less "what I'll be remembered for." I would like people to think of me as someone who tries hard not to be a piece of shit to my fellow man. I would also like to not be remembered as a long-term barista.
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Well, he's dead now. You can all go free.
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BILLIONS WEEP, GNASH TEETH, RENDER GARMENTS AS OUR BELOVED EMPEROR TAKEN TO HEAVEN IN HIS 135th YEAR.
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I guess Ash has already made those kinds of Grown-Up Decisions, but I have sort of drifted in and out of things and haven't ever actually had to sit down and Choose a Career before.
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I did this a while back, and damned if I can find it. I'm still pretty much on the path I had figured out then - with the exception that I still don't have "Dr." as part of my name. I made the decision to forgo further schooling once the second kid came along. All shmaltziness aside, kids really are the only legacy most of us will leave of any lasting significance. I am somewhat hopeful that my alma mater's lacrosse team will become a more permanent part of the University and my passing will be noted by the perennial MCLA playoff contending squad. We had a memorial at last years' Alumni game for the two men who have died who played for the club during their college careers. Both too young (20's), one due to cancer, one lost overboard giraffeing commercially in Alaskan waters.
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When I figure out how to monetize fuck*ng around on the internet I will let you know.
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When I figure out how to monetize fuck*ng around on the internet I will let you know.
This is pretty much what I have been doing for the past few years but while I am getting money out of it, it still isn't enough to live on. But maybe you can find a more lucrative niche to fuck around in.
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I'm seriously considering getting back into the sex writing game, actually. That was one of my better-paying gigs.
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When I figure out how to monetize fuck*ng around on the internet I will let you know.
I mean.... right? Though with the market saturation that probably doesn't pay so well either.
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It's kind of interesting to me. Right now, if I were to write my obituary based on what I've done, it would look highly impressive on paper with all sorts of career and creative accomplishments, awards and accolades along with some significant social impact, yet all I want to be is a wife a mother. I'm longing for your opposite JL. It's not to say one path is more valid than the other. I'm grateful for what I've had and what I will have in equal measures. Certainly, while trying to conceive, when it looked like it wasn't happening, I worried that maybe I had traded one for the other. Thankfully that doesn't seem to be so.
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There goes the guy who sucks; plus he had depression.
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I don't think too much about when I'm gone.
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Mostly, I'm annoyed about missing all the cool shit that is coming.
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Mostly, I'm annoyed about missing all the cool shit that is coming.
I'm planning on staying alive for most of it.
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Let me know how that works out for you.
Oh, wait
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It's definitely a viking funeral for me, with a big drunken party. Maybe a little will reading where my sister [or other selected next of kin] gets everything so no one else finds out how poor I am, and then she has to try to give away my paintings. Great, now I'm gonna be thinking about that scene next time I paint. All about how she'll never be able to give this one away, cause it sucks. There goes that hobby...
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My dad has said for years he wants a Viking funeral. I'm yet to determine whether this can be done without me ending up imprisoned.
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(https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/305226_433197030102013_1902160513_n.jpg)
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What does it cost if you want them to wail, rend their clothes, and beseech the heavens for the return of the deceased?
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Rent a mourner and rent a white guy business is thriving in parts of asia.