The Grateful Autistic

The thoughts of a reborn woman.

Experiences of being proud to be AUTISTIC and TRANSGENDER while losing my religious faith and discovering spiritual freedom.

Words of love and gratitude and life in the wonderful city of Newcastle Upon Tyne.

Monday 2 January 2017

Days of Gratitude - This Is The End, The Final Days of 2016

2016 is over.  If you are reading this then you survived all the highs and lows and the joys and sorrows.  Well done.  Give yourself a pat on the back.



This is the end.  The final set of gratitude diary entries.  It's January now and the first day in a year on which I'm deliberately not posting anything.  For me it's served its purpose and I am moving on to whatever exciting things happen this year.

2017 is the year for doing.  That was in part of a message received yesterday by/through a friend.  She's crazy but she speaks sense.  This is a year for doing.  Not just talking but doing.  Getting on with it.  Getting on with whatever the vision is and with embracing self and others and walking the path.  That's what my friend said anyway.  And do you know what?  On this occasion I believe her.

Perhaps the song by The Doors isn't appropriate.

Because this isn't just the end.

This is the beginning.


26th December


Grateful to have tidied a room. I can now see the desk table again.
I put things on the walls again, securely, that had fallen off.
And my collapsing Catholic pictures now have the addition of a ten foot rosary, an essential item for any forty foot tall Catholic enthusiasts.

27th December

Grateful for new writing ideas and for hope.
Grateful for sorting out the CDs I cleared out months ago and that selling some of them - not the ones in the picture - should nearly pay for my Lit & Phil membership. 

28th December 
Grateful that I can move on from a game obsession after a week of wasting too much time.
I have reached this point.
 
Let's just ignore the thousands of user made levels and move on. A good idea!

29th December

Crappy day of a PIP tribunal that didn't happen. They adjourned it. It was not pleasant.
Grateful for these tasty treats forming a most unhealthy dinner.

31st December

Grateful to have spent the end of the year as I wish to begin the new. With family, crazy people, and friendship. With reading and writing. With walking and seeing the sea. With meditation. And with a lot of hope.


Grateful too for the way Blob Thing helped me in 2016. It's his first birthday.




Sunday 1 January 2017

Days of Gratitude - It's Getting Very Near The End

Yes it is.  It's getting very near the end.  I wanted to present to you The Beatles recording of the reprise of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band.  Unfortunately all the YouTube videos of that have been blocked on copyright grounds.  And that means that none of you will hear the performance and rush out and buy the album.  Instead, here's Cheap Trick.


The end is over.  It's January 1st 2017 and my challenge to post every day in the Sunday Assembly Gratitude Group for a year is complete.  I didn't quite succeed.  On average I missed posting on one day a month.  Now I'm moving onto other things.  I've started a blog to post free writing on as many days as I can manage it, without worrying about quality although hoping that generally the quality will improve as the year continues.  That blog can be found here.  I've started another blog in which I want to consider the Gospels from the New Testament from my post-church, post-Christian, post-theist perspective.  I also know that there will be many things I write this year that won't ever see daylight.  I'm just going to enjoy myself with it.

The gratitude posts helped me a lot in 2016 but in all honesty I am glad to be leaving them behind.  Maybe if the group had remained a place where lots of people posted I'd be happy to stay.  But it didn't.  There are so few of us and I know it's time to move on, with gratitude for the memories and gratitude for the change.

You can almost tell in these entries - or perhaps you can tell without a shadow of a doubt - that I have been quite looking forward to leaving it all behind.

I sit here on the afternoon of January 1st 2017 with reading books, writing books and with a Bible I wasn't expecting to be reading.  I sit here with unformed plans and hopes and know that the year will contain surprises, triumphs and setbacks.   I sit here believing that 2017 is a year for living more fully than I have ever lived before.



21st December

Grateful for a quiet day. The tree is up but undecorated!

Grateful for reading, silly games, DVDs.

Grateful that though the exercise from the physio is (swear word) painful it should do some good for my spine and leave it slightly less the wrong shape.

22nd December

Grateful that people have liked the story I posted a few days ago.
Maybe it could be edited, proof read (it has typos!) and tweaked and submitted somewhere for next Christmas.


23rd December

Grateful that all the shopping is finished without too much pain.

Grateful that none of the things I had to in town were Christmas related and that they included seeking refuge in the Lit & Phil and browsing a magazine about writing.

Think I'm going to enjoy using that place as a refuge. Once I've bought myself a decent flask so I don't have to pay for tea that comes in mugs that aren't large enough and isn't chai.


24th December
Grateful to have free written something about Christmas in addition to the 15,000 word story posted a few days previously.
Grateful to have photos from my childhood, showing a few edited highlights of those years.
This photo isn't in the blog but was taken on Christmas Day 1974.

25th December
Grateful for a quiet day at home with no pressures and pain au chocolat for breakfast.
Beth bought me some maps and books.