My Tags

Here are some of my personal tags:

#underwater:  Sometimes I feel as if I live a good portion of my life underwater, but all some people see is what’s happening on the surface.  This tag is for things that let people know what’s going on underneath.

#have you ever: This is one particular incarnation of the #underwater postings, in which I ask “Have you ever…?” and then describe a lot of experiences I’ve had, mostly related to autism and cognitive impairment.

#sensing:  Donna Williams first used this word to describe the way some autistic and other cognitively disabled people perceive the world, in terms of sensory and pre-sensory patterns, rather than in terms of ideas, abstractions (even simple abstractions like “cat”), or words.  Sensing is my dominant way of experiencing the world, and this tag deals with things related to sensing.

#little packages:  The idea of setting out little packages of information where other people can see them and read them at their leisure.  Little packages that are outside the realm of ideology.  Little packages that may be right, or may be wrong, or are probably a little bit of both, but most of all are free from having to meet the requirements of echo chambers and their ideologies.

#outside the wall: Notes from outside the walls of the echo chambers and ideologies and ivory towers that sometimes dominate tumblr conversation.

#ActuallyDD: I invented this tag, but hopefully lots of people will use it.  A tag for use by anyone who actually has any form of developmental disability.  The most commonly noted forms of developmental disability are intellectual disability, autism, cerebral palsy, childhood epilepsy, spina bifida, childhood brain injury, and the fetal alcohol spectrum.#exgifted:  My IQ dropped from the 135-160 range at age five, to 85 at age 22.  This means I once qualified as gifted and no longer do.  This came with a range of consequences that nobody ever wants to talk about.  This is not as rare as you’d think it is.  This is the tag where I put these experiences because I don’t want anyone else to feel as alone as I did, going through these changes.  Don’t assume you know what I think, or how I feel, about these experiences, without actually reading the posts in this tag.