Hello everyone and how are we all? Did anyone do anything for Autism Awareness week? I took part in the #Iwantcampaign. It’s a campaign to tell everyone what we would like to see more of as in terms of inclusion within our society. My memo was #Iwanttobemyself. I chose this as it means a lot to me to be able to express myself. 

I have struggled a lot this month.  It has been hard settling back into the school routine for various reasons. I really did struggle with home learning and then a reduced school timetable and in turn found it difficult to get up in time for the school bus which now picks me up at 7:30am. Another thing I found hard was adapting back to the other children on the bus as we all have differences in terms of needs so it’s more unpredictable times when there are more of us on the mini bus. I am very sociable and like to chat to the driver but this can sometimes be distracting for them so I will have move to the back of the mini bus. I often try to think and talk about positive times with one of my friends on the bus to lower my anxiety levels.

My teacher noticed that I was a bit more anxious than usual on the first week back and created me a social story and some visuals as well as my sensory wall and as the week passed by I started to feel a lot more at ease. My main concern about going back to school was the Covid testing we have to do twice a week. I had a few questions going around my mind and was anxious to find answers. I need to have everything equal so clothes with logos are a no no, numbers have to be even, how something is placed has to be equal, I even write with both hands on the pen so the question was ‘Am I able to carry out the test by inserting it in each nostril?’ This is something that may not bother other people but for me it was a big deal so you can imagine my relief when I was told it was ok to do this. 

I have been raising some money for Red Nose Day. This is something I do every year and really try and get involved in the whole spirit of this charity. This year I wanted to express myself by dressing up as character called ‘Lucy’. This would involve wearing a red dress, a red wig and any red accessories. Due to covid restrictions I hadn’t realised that I couldn’t wear my costume to school and I was quite upset about this as I had been preparing how I would walk and talk for a few weeks because as you know I love to act!  I really surprised my mum and myself though because the more I thought about it the more I thought about other  things I could wear so the next day I wore smart trousers and a dark shirt and put on my amazing sparkly red waistcoat and I went to school as ‘Logan’. My mum said she couldn’t believe how mature I had been. One child said ‘Wow that looks so cool!’ and by this remark it made me feel really good about myself for the rest of the day. I did however, get stressed when I looked down at my feet and saw that my shoes were no longer equal. This was due to the fact that the leather had creased from the walking I had done in them. One of the teaching assistants at school reassured me that this was absolutely fine so I took a deep breath and went back to the social area and was fine all day.  When I got home from school I changed my outfit to my ‘Lucy’ one and set of walking down the road to my local shop. It was so funny because I had lots of cars beeping at me, people cheering and it just made me feel brilliant about myself. 

As usual I have been keeping myself busy with lots of online competitions and gained two places in the grand final of Centre Stage Door where I will be performing a monologue and vocals next month. I took part in a poetry competition run by the Hull City Council and won! I received a book token and a selection of stationary!

I am continuing with my flute lessons and have written my own piece of music named ‘My baby child’ and have enjoyed this experience. As you can tell I keep myself really busy by doing lots of activities otherwise I get wrapped up in my own thoughts and it just makes me feel very anxious. I absolutely love performing and hope to go to drama school when I am older to pursue a career in acting.
Hope you enjoyed reading