7th October 2018
Next week will be the one year anniversary of the launch of www.an-autistics-view.co.uk and it has been an amazing year. I started the website with the intention to raise awareness and acceptance of Autism, including the key areas of adult awareness and employment. The main part of the site being a weekly blog discussing various topics. At the beginning I was a little apprehensive of this as making the commitment of writing regularly was something I was not sure I was able to do.
In my life I have tried in the past to do regular tasks such as write diaries and they have never lasted more than a few days or weeks before I lose commitment or life gets in the way. When I started the website I was worried that blogging would be difficult for this reason. I was wrong. A year later, I have created a blog almost every week.
I have always thought of myself as a creative person but never a writer. This changed when about six months in, somebody actually said this to me, “well you write a blog, therefore you are kind of a writer”. And although I was never going to write a great novel, I did think, yeah maybe I am writer. So a year on how did I manage to keep writing my blog. Two reasons. Firstly I enjoyed it and secondly, thanks to you the readers.
I am not really into the numbers when it comes to people visiting my website – obviously I look at them to see how I am doing but I do not really publish them. There is no site counter on my site. Normally I do not think this is important but I will reveal them today.
In a year the website has had 1522 visitors. Which is approximately 4 people visiting my site daily. The reason I wanted to say the numbers because I want to personally thank all of the 1522 people who have visited. You make “an-autistics-view” worthwhile and to know that you are out there reading my work cements the knowledge that what I am doing is worthwhile and this makes me happy.
I cannot thank you enough for this.
So the big question is “what’s next?” Well I am planning some changes next week to mark the occasion. Don’t worry I am going to keep blogging and I have lots of topics lined up for future reads. What is going to be new though, is that I am going to be doing some vlogging as well on this site. The reasons for this is that there are some topics that I want to talk about that would be better suited to a video then the written word, I want to do something different for my own interest and it should be fun. The plan is to try and do a monthly video and the rest of the weeks do my regular blogging. The week a video goes up, there won’t be a blog and vice versa.
That’s the plan but let’s see how it goes. The first video will start next week and is a fun one about collecting things in which I talk about collecting Harry Potter Lego mini-figures. Blogging will then follow on from next week. I have enjoyed making the video, especially learning about the editing process. We all watch videos online but sometimes you don’t realise the effort that goes behind them – making my first vlog has made me appreciate filmmakers even more for the time and work that goes into them!
I want to conclude by thanking a couple of people who have contributed behind the scenes at www.an-autistics-view.co.uk. Firstly, my amazing wife who also acts as my English and grammar checker. Without her many of my readers would have been baffled by some of the so called non-English sentences written.
Secondly, my boss at work, who I know regularly reads my articles and who also contributed to an interview blog earlier this year. Finally a big thank you to those people in the Autistic community who have shared links to my pages or have included me in articles, in particular James AutismRevised (who has included my work in some of his excellent monthly round up blogs), Purple Ella, Indie Andy and Sez Francis.
If I have missed anyone – I apologise, there has been so much positivity, positive comments, I would need another blog post. You people are all amazing. A shout out to both Connor Ward and InvisibleI who helped give me the initial push at the Birmingham Autism Show two years ago, I needed that.
The last word goes out to everyone who is creating content within the Autistic community, whether online or not. No matter how old or young, what gender, diagnosed, self diagnosed or not on the spectrum at all – you all inspire me. You help me belong. You are all the life blood of my website and what I do. It’s just great.
So Happy Birthday to “www.an-autistics-view.co.uk” and here’s to another year starting next week.