All In Me Head

My day started out with Pink Floyd’s “Learning To Fly” on the radio on my drive to the restaurant where I’d spend the better part of my day.  Among many favourite Pink Floyd songs, that one’s certainly near the top of the list.  Cool as that was on a day like today, what’s cooler is how well many of the lyrics figured in to my relationship with today’s main event.

I can remember the day Bill Clinton took over from George H W Bush, but frankly, I can’t recall the re-up celebration in 1997.  I certainly can’t recall where I was for the last two inaugurals.  I didn’t care in 2001, I cared even less in 2005, and I still don’t care where I was.  Not having contact with my autism back then, I didn’t understand why ceremony meant little on the best of days — although I certainly THOUGHT I understood why it was meaningless in the case of a thief named “W.”

I watched this Inaugural, though, from the [location deleted for individual safety], of all places. Not where I’d expected to be, even 72 hours prior.

I’d anticipated, as always, going quietly to work, and perhaps opening a feed while I worked, then coming home early and watching “reruns” on YouTube.  Crowds suck when you’re autistic, and watching ceremonies — meaningful or not — in the middle of crowds doesn’t up the pleasure level much.

But, the Fates weren’t interested in being kind today.  For some reason, they decided that if I could handle the crowds at election headquarters in Warsaw on Election Day, I could handle crowds here, if I was doing something worthwhile.  As it turns out, President Obama’s “Neighborhood Ball” was supposed to have something along the lines of a “video wall” of various neighborhood celebrations.  Because (as I understand things) of the radical gain in blue votes (+50% over 2004), we were chosen to ‘feed’ our gathering LIVE via webcam from a wireless laptop to a coordination center for later use at the ball.

That’s the problem with being an MIS — everyone thinks you can pull off miracles.  That’s great, when you can be alone, at 0230h, working in one or more mediums you understand.  Miracles = easy, then.   That’s NOT so easy in the middle of a very loud crowd, stirred up to be even louder, with ONE CHANCE for success, with a medium you’ve NEVER used before, and have fewer than 24 hours to make work.  I don’t own a web-cam and had never used one.  (Why the hell would people want to look at a PHOTO of me, leave alone a stream?)  So why I said yes when asked, I have no idea.  But I did.

Yes we can. I guess.

Long story short, I ended up watching this inauguration from a room packed with as many as 100 people (with more standing outside).  People of all nationalities , all skin colours, all ages, and all social levels.  (That’s awesome, in this town.)  I didn’t get to see much in the way of the actual inauguration until the CSPAN reruns (which just ended as I write this), but the comraderie rocked.

“I can’t believe I’m here,” I wrote in notes for this blog.  “I should, and ordinarily would be FREAKING OUT at HALF this crowd size.”

“But,” I continued, “as has been typical of this whole campaign, I’m here with the comfort of my computer, so I’m not just with like-minded REAL people, but I’m linked as well to my online friends at Twitter and Digg.  What a radical change from two years ago, when I first donated to this campaign.  I remember growling at the time that I couldn’t muster up enough friends to bear my casket if I’d died.”

“But I’m not reminiscing on numbers today.  Rather, I’m keying on the REASON for this dramatic turn about.  Oddly enough, it’s the same reason I’m in this room.”

Sure, I’d started some timid ventures on MySpace in early 2008, and a few more on Facebook by February and March of that year, but it was only when I really got involved in ORR in May and then in Digg in August — both for Obama, that my list of friends grew radically.  The more I stuck myself out there for Obama, in ways my autism could “handle,” the more my “life” filled out.  The more I was willing to serve the campaign in inconspicuous, unconventional ways, the more comfortable I became.  Not only doing more of the same, but trying new things, to the point where people today (who haven’t known me for very long) find it hard to believe that I still deal with severe HFA/Asperger’s.)

I think there’s a lesson for the country in that.  Americans have always been a retiring, almost isolationist people, with a dislike, I believe, for inconspicous, unconventional solutions.  But we don’t have the luxury of indulging that now.  We don’t have enough nations to be our pallbearers if we die.  We need to reach out in SERVICE if we’re going to help ourselves back up — and ways which hitherto haven’t been thought useful.  (I’d still be sitting in the silence of my house, reading stories on MSNBC for my own personal knowledge if I’d allowed my utter terror of phone banks or door-to-door to define my usefulness to the campaign.)

I’d have to agree with a comment of President Obama’s in his speech today:  “As the world grows smaller, our common humanity will reveal itself.”   Looking back on the two themes of the past year or so: service to Obama and the growth of my own world.  The growth of my world has allowed for common themes to emerge, common answers to many of my pressing questions about where I fit.

And so today I think I’ve had my own Inauguration Day — likewise the result of months of preparation, of reaching out.  I was a different person in there today.  I still have serious liabilities — I still can’t read faces fast enough to be meaningful, for example — but now, it seems, as the common humanity that I’ve seen reveals itself, my own humanity emerges just a little more each day.

Tags: aspergers, Autism/Asperger's, Facebook, inaugural, inauguration, laptop, MIS, MySpace, Obama, personal growth, service, streaming, Technology, video, wireless

This entry was posted by admin on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 11:18 AM and is filed under Autism/Asperger's, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.