This year, I will be participating in the A to Z Blogging Challenge, mostly to get myself back in the swing of blogging regularly. I have made some good online friends and found some interesting blogs through this process in the past. Those two things would be pleasant to experience again, but I really just need to get to blogging again.

My theme this year will be “A Crash Course in Being Me.” I realize that my blog hasn’t ever been something that appeals to the masses, and that is ok. If I can entertain one reader, if I can inform another, if I can persuade someone, or provide a possible solution to a problem — those small connections are all I desire.

As well, there is nothing so helpful to me as seeing ideas in print. Podcasts are great. Presentations are interesting. Lectures can be stimulating. But being able to read the words is the way I really learn.

I have a lot to learn right now, and always, and my blog is a place where I put those lessons so I can see them again and again.

The true subject of my blog for the blog challenge is parenting my special needs child. He is 11, and was born with Down syndrome. He’s completing 4th grade at the moment, and keeps me busy from sunup to sundown, and then some.

How else can I say it? I have woken up.

One month ago tomorrow, I went to my therapy group feeling pretty overwhelmed. I left group feeling inspired and energized. It bugs me that I cannot explain this seismic shift in my attitude, perceptions of capability, and energy level. Why now? I don’t know and I wish I did. It feels all just a little precarious since I can’t point to anything directly which is clearly the reason why I woke up. “Like waking up from the longest dream …” as the old Phil Keaggy song says.

Me: the morning of February 23.

Me: the morning of February 25 and pretty much every morning since then.

OK, so maybe I have a couple of ideas about some of the possible factors in this shift, but still I cannot explain it as “First A, then B.” And I guess that’s kind of how a lot of things are. Life is a series of experiments and a series of reflections on the experiments and a never-ending repository of new opportunities to respond to the next thing.

So, top of the morning to you. I had a nice nap.