Things I miss
I don’t link to it often but I do have an archive of my old disability blog. It used to have its own domain and everything. I did my best to make sure that old domain and any URLs still work and redirect to this static archive—because cool URIs don’t change. But I don’t link to them much anymore because the posts are old and I am slightly embarrassed by some of them.
But every now and then I poke around in the archives myself and reminisce about times past.
The other day I was reminded of a post I wrote about SMA. I wrote it soon after I discovered I had grown too weak to handle a PlayStation controller and play the new edition of Madden I had just received as a gift. In that post I said:
But SMA took football from me. And it took writing (by making it slow and tedious).[1] It keeps taking and taking. Its hunger is never filled nor its thirst quenched.
I wrote that in 2009. Fifteen years ago. I’ve lost even more abilities since then. Sometimes I think about the things I used to be able to do. Some of them I miss dearly. So in this somewhat downer of a blog post, I thought I would make a list of things that I miss being able to do.
Disclaimer: I told myself I wasn’t going put one of these in here, but what if this is the only blog post of mine that someone sees? I feel I need to mention that I am living a good life. I have fun making things, I have a job doing meaningful work, and I’ve gotten pretty good at adapting to my disability.
Okay, with that out of the way, here we go—in no particular order:
- Handwriting
- Drawing
- Typing on a keyboard
- Using a video game controller
- Playing video games using a keyboard
- The ability to right-click a mouse
- Catching a football
- Walking (okay more like hopping) around a swimming pool
- Playing with/handling physical objects
- Painting ceramics
- Using Field Notes
- Using a pen tablet mouse
- Playing action games with quick reaction times
- Moving chess pieces
- Swallowing easily
- Holding a hockey stick
- Calligraphy
- Clicking a retractable pen
- Using a mechanical pencil
- Playing games on my iPhone
- Writing on my iPhone
- Drawing on my iPhone
- Playing music on a Cassio keyboard [2]
- Holding a book
- Turning pages
- Holding a Kindle
- Holding a sandwich
- Feeding myself
- Scratching my face
- Turning my head
- Sleeping on my stomach
- Playing with a bouncing ball
- Using a trackpad
- Using a calculator
- Doodling
- Playing with Legos
- Holding a drink
- Eating an ice cream cone
- Eating popcorn [3]
- Holding playing cards
- Driving with a standard wheelchair joystick
- Playing with GarageBand on an iPad
- Picking at my fingernails
- Tapping a pen
- Playing a GameBoy
- Playing Duck Hunt
- Rolling dice
- Handling dominoes
- Putting a cassette in a Sony Walkman
- Thumb war
- Coloring
I’m sure there are way more but now that I’ve gotten to this point in the list I haven’t been able to think of anything else for a few minutes. So I guess I’m calling this done.
Let’s pour one out for where we’ve been and turn our attention back to where we’re going.
SMA didn’t take writing away. Through a combination of an optimized onscreen keyboard and a voice input tool, I continue to write blog posts, code, and very bad fiction. ↩︎
This is one of the last times I was able to play music. I was using an iPad mini. I wore a glove so that I could rest my hand on the screen. My elbow sat on an armrest that swivelled, which gave me the range of motion to move my arm around. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uhcCow3M8Q ↩︎
With my difficulty swallowing, it is too easy for me to get choked up on the husks. ↩︎