The Future of Life with Autism and Bipolar

 

I suppose the title to this post is a bit ominous. I have been thinking about the future of this blog, and am hoping to adapt it from a smaller blog to a more professional looking blog focusing on continuing it's mission of educating about mental health disorders on both the science as well as the reality.

My plans to improve the blog is to move book reviews to a separate blog.

I love book reviews. To write them is a release. However, not all of them are relevant to the mission and direction that I want Life with Autism and Bipolar (LWAB) to take. Book reviews will be moved to here www.thebookrecluse.com.  I will be continually updating that site and making it more functional.

Book reviews relevant to mental health concerns will be cross posted across both blogs.

Continue providing food related posts

I believe food is connected to healing when it comes to mental health. I strongly believe that eating Paleo is improving my children's behavior. I do not believe that it is curing it. Maybe if I would have started three generations ago. However, I am starting now and hope that the effects will be long term. I also believe that finding time and ways to feed your family is yet another way of caring for them. As such I plan to continue the weekly menus.

 Improve Science Content

LWAB is not my full time job. I have a full time job in addition to caring for my three special children and maintaining this blog. However, this blog is very important to me. It is how I distress and is my social outlet. My aim is to not only to continue to provide posts on the science of mental health in a straightforward manner, but to increase the amount of those posts. Ultimatly that will be dependent on how the rest of my life is going.

Continue updates on my family

One of my aims of this blog is to talk about the reality of raising a family with mental heath disorders. Mental health disorders are so taboo in our society. The reality is I have a son who struggles with aggression and understanding consequence and actions. I have a daughter who sometimes does not reside in the same reality as 'the rest of the world' and who's moods fluctuate frequently. I have a brilliant little girl who has to constantly remember social rules why playing, continually self stims, has tried to commit suicide, has fluctuating moods, and the rest of the world wants to ignore that she also needs help because she is cute and smart. I am an Aspie in a Neurotypical world - I say what I see because I want to help the rest of the world to understand.

Improved Web Support

I have attempted to improve the functionality of my blog. While I think the new design is worlds better, for long term sustainability I would like to pull it off a free web host and improve the flexibility of design with wordpress.org and a webhosting service.

I am not going to lie and say that one day I hope that this blog brings in a modest second income for my family. However, the primary goal is education. To improve functionality it does cost money. This blog is not generating any, and my full time income is already stretched trying to provide for the needs of my children.

So. . .

I have started a kickstarter complain to help. Since the primary viewer of this blog is other families with special kids I understand that budgets are tight. If you are able to help, that would be great. No matter the outcome of the campaign I will do my best to work on improving this site to continue to goal of education. It is why I went back to school to study Psychology. It is why I continued on with my master's degree. It is why I write this blog.

Thank you for being a reader.