Aspie and change number two

 Sorry I haven't been on here lately. So much has happened since Mum came home in June after her stroke. She was more subdued and quieter than before. Then a couple of weeks ago she caught a chest infection leading to sepsis. She is on the mend now and possibly coming home sometime next week.

Anyway, coming home from hospital was the next change in my life. I would be on my own as Mum was still in hospital herself then. Time to recuperate by myself. One change that was immediate was the layout of downstairs. Mum and I both had our beds brought downstairs by my brother. Here is what I wrote in my memoir coming soon.

 Alone, I sat down, put my head in my hands and said, “I'm home.” It was a different home to when I had left back in February. The living room was now a cum-bedroom with both my and my mum's beds in there. The sofa was now in the dining room with Mum's clothes on it. The dining table had been dismantled and put upstairs. All done by Ian. What an amazing brother!

The second change was me having carers coming in to help me. I never thought I'd have carers, not until I was older anyway. It helped me a lot. But being on my own, having to do things by myself, was a major change for me. It was the longest I had been on my own in the house for ages. Up until then the longest I had been on my own was a weekend in 2016 when Mum was in hospital. It really helped me find my feet, and I feel now that it stood me in good stead for future times when I have to be on my own, like now. At least I know now that I can and am able to live on my own when the time comes, which I know it will sooner than later.

Aspies and change

One thing that people with Asperger's find hard to cope with is change. Well, I certainly went through a lot of that last year when I went into hospital. That was the first major change to my life. I think it helped me because I knew in advance (the day before) that I was going in, and I knew that I had to go as it would help me and my health. Then came more change as I went from one hospital to another to find out what was wrong with me. Again I knew it was to help find out what was wrong with me. I somehow managed to cope with all of that change until there was one change too many for me. I have described it my memoir like this

 I went from the quiet of ICU to the noise, lights and busyness of Doulton High Dependency Unit. The contrast was amazing. One thing us Aspies do find hard to cope with is change. This change was hard for me. I had coped well with going into hospital, then from one hospital to another and another, but this was something else. I think now it was that plus being in a strange environment that made me unable to sleep for three nights.

Once I got used to the routines and everything happening to me in that ward, I calmed down.

There was more change to come when I got home, and then Mum came home too. I shall tell you about that in the next post.

More changes in Womagland

That is the land of women's magazines, esp fiction. Authors who write fiction for womags, esp Woman's Weekly, are up in arms at the moment because of recent changes that have been found out. They weren't happy before because their payment date was changed to when their story was published and not on acceptance like it used to be. Now they are even more unhappy as there are two more changes now that the company who owns the magazine has been taken over. The following changes are:

1. Stories accepted, whether by new or established authors, will have acceptances on an 'all rights' basis. This is not good at all. All rights means that they take all your rights away from you so you are no longer the copyright holder of the story, and you can't do anything else with that story yourself, inc submitting it to the ALCS. It also means the magazine can do what they like with it and maybe not pay you for it. Wrong on all accounts.

2. New authors who get their story accepted also have a pay cut. It used to be £150 but it's now £100, and possibly no chance to have a raise with more stories published.

So, if you do want to have a story accepted by Woman's Weekly, please think again. If you're not sure about the contract that comes with it, you could try to get it changed but it might not work. The only option is to refuse to sign and find another market for that story. or self-publish it.

The best blog to read about all this and more on writing for womags is https://womagwriter.blogspot.com/. Even the author who runs this blog says she would refuse to sign the contract on the all rights basis now.