Disability Blogging Resoultions

A blog post by my favorite political blogger had the exact opposite of its intended effect on me. It has encouraged me to blog some New Year's Resolutions. I will, however, try to follow Atrios' advice and set resolutions for myself, rather than sanctimoniously pushing them on others.

Here are my Disability Blogging Resolutions for 2017:

1. I will maintain a consistent weekly and monthly schedule.

This means posting a Weekly Reading List every Monday, a regular blog post on some disability topic every Friday or Saturday, a Disability Blogger Linkup the second Friday of each month, a Monthly Wrap-Up once a month, and an occasional Throwback Thursday repost from the Disability Thinking archives. It’s less than I used to post, but I am busier lately. If I can manage it, quality and consistency at this point is probably better than quantity.

2. I will write more about my own experiences with disability and the evolution of my disability thinking.

To start with I want to do more “I Used To Think …” posts, exploring specific ways my thinking about disability changed from one stage of my life to another. Beyond that, I want to share more about my personal disability experiences, and bring those experiences to bear more often in posts about current disability issues and culture.

3. I will make my writing about disability issues and activism more accessible.

To be honest, this one is also a little bit of a suggestion for other disability bloggers too. I think that one probably harmless way we can “reach out” to people who aren’t dialed in to disability issues … both non-disabled people and disconnected disabled people … is to cut down on the activist and sociology jargon, and when we do use it, explain it. There are good, solid reasons to use terms like “ableism,” “intersectionality,” “eugenics,” “erasure,” "inspiration porn," etc. They give names to real-life experiences that are otherwise hard to describe and pinpoint. But, these terms also tend to widen the gap between people who are active in disability issues and culture, and those who aren’t. Often, the crucial difference is education, or lack of it, and integration in a supportive disability community … or the reverse and very common experience of isolation in forest of non-disability. It’s not just terminology. I want to at least try to make what I write informationally and conceptually accessible to people outside the active disability blogging and activist communities. Being mindful about terminology is just one fairly easy place to start. We’ll see how it goes. And I invite readers and fellow bloggers to give it a try, too.

This seems like a doable list of resolutions. Please feel free to hold me to these commitments as the new year progresses!