Reflections, Interesting Discoveries And Some Sadness

[chelseajmunoz]

In the last blog entry that I'd written yesterday I forgot to mention the fact that when I went to the DMV with an acquaintance of mine on Friday the temperature was in the 80s or thereabouts. Truthfully though the temperature felt much fucking hotter than 80-something degrees!! All I can say is that I'm certainly not looking forward to this kind of weather being here for any amount of time. And because my body literally can't handle being in the sun for any amount of time I'm going to have to make sure that I carry medication on me at all times. Because taking a certain kind of medication is the only way I can keep myself from throwing up because of the way my body reacts to the heat. I hope I don't regret my decision to shoot for starting school in the summertime. LOL. Yesterday evening I watched the latest episode of Once Upon A Time. In watching that particular show's latest episode it became real to me that said show will likely be ending soon. Ever since I'd first started watching Once Upon A Time late last year I was hooked to the show. I spent time watching every single episode and falling more in love with the story lines as the show developed. So after I'd watched Once Upon A Time's latest episode I reflected a little bit on what it's like for me to not have contact with Max and Alex (my brothers). Because the latest episode of Once Upon A Time was about sisterhood and how powerful a bond sisterhood could be. Regarding Max, Alex and I though: while it's true that losing Max and Alex creates a void in my life that's impossible to fill I realize that life goes on regardless of the emotions I may feel at any given time. However I do hate it when people give me false hope like "Oh Max and Alex will want to find you someday." Max and Alex may not ever want anything to do with me because of how severely my mom has brainwashed the two of them. Max and Alex may want to at least try and find out from me what I'm about...but I can't focus on what the two of them may or may not do. Do I miss them? Sure I do. However I also realize that they may turn out exactly like my mom in which case seeing them may be too sad and depressing for me to handle. No one ever talks about that possible ugly truth though...until now. And quite frankly I wouldn't want to put myself through that sort of thing if I can help it...and since I don't live in Texas anymore it's easier for me to have more agency in my own life than I'd had when I lived in Texas. What I mean is that it's easier for me to follow my core values and remind myself that I don't have to form a relationship with anyone that I don't want to form a relationship with. Because whatever Max and Alex choose to do I'm living the life I want to live. Quite frankly that's all that matters to me. Shortly after I'd watched the latest episode of Once Upon A Time yesterday I posted an FB status update saying that I wonder how many more episodes of that particular show there will be. A little while after I'd posted said FB status update I opened the Health app on my iPhone to see if there was anything cool in that particular iPhone app that wasn't there before. It turned out that Apple had put a section in the Health app that would allow people to register for organ donation if he or she'd like to do so. Since I'm all about society saving lives every chance that society gets I registered to be an organ donor. The company that my information gets sent to is called Donate Life America. After I'd submitted my information to Donate Life America I thought about each time that I've been in the hospital within the last several years. What I thought about was the fact that I remembered telling hospital personnel in Texas at least once or twice that I wanted to be an organ donor. However I guess those hospital personnel didn't actually register me with an official agency that's in charge of organ donation. So I'm really happy that I was able to sign up with Donate Life America. I think that everyone should sign up with an organ donation agency because no one ever knows how we can save the lives of other people once we're gone. On a sort of related note about the iPhone: it's been a few days since I installed the latest iOS update (iOS 11.3 to be exact) and I have some things to say about this particular iOS update. The first thing I have to say about iOS 11.3 is that this particular iOS update has been a long-time coming for those of us who are blind because in iOS 11.3 VoiceOver runs super-smoothly. Whereas in previous iOS updates VoiceOver seemed to be rather buggy for lack of a better word. Now though? In iOS 11.3 VoiceOver is my best friend! Also, this particular iOS update is nowhere near as buggy as iOS updates have been for me in the past. In fact I haven't found any bugs whatsoever in iOS 11.3. I know that nothing ever stays the same, especially when the thing that changes happens to be technology and that's why I had to write about how great iOS 11.3 is: because I know that the iPhone's greatness may not last for everyone. I'm hopeful that the iPhones greatness lasts for everyone but that doesn't mean that my hope will come true. Especially as a blind person, I'm all too aware that the world as a whole is not made for disabled people. It sucks to be an after-thoughtt if we're lucky. Yet that's the reality we as blind/otherwise disabled people live in nonetheless. Another thing I've noticed about this latest iOS update of iOS 11.3 is that when my alarm goes off for me to take my medication and I use my phone to stop said alert, my giving my phone that particular command also stops my Apple Watch's alarm too. And vice versa: if I use my Apple Watch to stop the alarm on my phone, I can do so...while stopping my alarm on my Apple Watch as well. I'd been wishing that Apple would implement the ability to carry things out this way ever since I'd gotten my Apple Watch. However until this recent software update on my phone as well as on my Apple Watch I thought it was just a limitation of the Apple Watch to not be able to stop my phone's alarm if I stopped my Apple Watch's alarm first. So needless to say I'm happy to see that Apple was forward-thinking like I was. Hopefully my explanation of this process makes sense to people as far as the way things used to be versus how things actually are now. Early this morning I logged onto my bank's phone app to pay my rent. I wanted to make sure that the process of submitting my payment would go through successfully which is why I submitted my rent payment so early in the morning. My bank's phone app even allowed me to set up reoccurring rent payments to automatically be paid at the first of every month which will hopefully make things run even smoother for me. A few hours after I'd paid this month's rent I read a reply that someone on my FB made to the FB status update I'd made the previous night about Once Upon A Time possibly ending sooner than I'd like for said show to end. The person who'd commented on said FB status update that I'd written said that when the first half of season 7 took a break from TV it was announced at that time that there would only be 20 episodes in the last season of Once Upon A Time. Damn, there won't be many episodes of said show after this last one aired. Today is a holiday (specifically Easter) which the majority of the world seems to celebrate. I used to join in the Easter celebrations as a kid but I never felt like I belonged at any church. I also didn't feel like deep down I believed that God (if he even existed) was dead. That's still true for me to this day: on the days when I don't have doubts of God's existence I don't think that God is dead. I also don't believe in people sinning and therefore being responsible for supposed horrible actions that were committed by the first people who existed on earth. Like, the only thing I'm responsible for is how I act in the world. I'm not responsible for anyone else's actions, ways of speaking or living ETC. As I think I've said before in my blog entries I don't believe that God gets pissed off when human beings have doubts in him. I don't believe that God negatively judges people who date people that are the same gender as him or her. I don't believe that God becomes pissed off in knowing that forgiveness means different things to different people. I don't believe that God is a punisher the way that many people make him out to be. I don't believe that God keeps score the way many human beings think he does. I also don't believe that God likes it when human beings keep score because in the end what matters is who people are and what kinds of things he or she regularly puts into the world. So anyway today is Easter for many people. For me though today is the first Easter that I'm doing exactly what I want to do: I'm not participating in a holiday for any reason. Why would I participate in a holiday when I don't identify with the things that many people in the world believe that this day represents? I used to feel pressured to participate in holidays of all sorts but this year I'm going to make choices that I Chelsea, actually want to make. Several hours after I'd paid my rent for this month I read an FB status update that someone on my friends list had posted wishing people a happy Easter. You know, that's another pet peeve of mine: the assumption that people make that just because she or he celebrates a particular holiday, that means that everyone in the world celebrates said holiday as well. The reason I think it's wrong for people to make such assumptions is because everyone in the world is an individual first and foremost. This means that each individual human being in the world will likely have different values and beliefs than other human beings in the world have. The fact that people have different beliefs than one another does not mean that one person's beliefs are right and another person's beliefs are wrong. It simply means that people's different perspectives on any given issue are what they are because of that particular person's life experiences, upbringing ETC. I will say though that it's incredibly harmful when anyone assumes that no one could possibly have different beliefs than he or she has, like the fact that in one person's mind, just because she or he celebrates Easter, it's okay and even valid for him or her to assume that the same is true for the entire world. Because I have the feelings I do about assumptions that people make I put an "angry" reaction on this person's FB happy Easter status update. I don't need to interact with this person about his beliefs because his and my interaction with one another would not be a meaningful discussion. He chooses to blindly follow religion because that's the way he was raised, whereas even though I was raised to follow Christianity, as an adult I've chosen a completely different path for myself that I couldn't be more proud of! This person's perspective and way of living life is vastly different from my belief system and how I live life. Yet because this person is an adult and because I'm an adult too we both have the right to make the choices in our lives that we feel best suit us. I don't agree with much of how this person lives, thinks or acts but he and I know each other because the two of us went to the Texas School for the Blind (TSBVI) around the same time as one another). A while after I'd read the person's FB status update that wished people a happy Easter regardless of whether or not everyone actually celebrated that particular holiday I emailed a lady at the local State Library for the Blind to follow up with her about whether she'd gotten my Braille and Audio Reading Download (BARD) information from the Texas State Library for the Blind yet. A little while after I'd sent a follow-up email to a lady from the local State Library for the Blind a friend and I watched Apple's latest big event with one another using his Apple TV. Apple's latest big event took place late last month and talked about all of the things that Apple is doing to show that education is important to that particular company. It was neat to hear about how Apple wants kids to become passionate about the things that they're learning in school and how school teachers are just as empowered to help their students be as engaged in the learning process as those students can be. Yet watching over an hour of an event like this became redundant very quickly to my friend and I. Once the entire Apple keynote had finished though my friend and I then searched YouTube for videos on how Aira for blind and visually impaired people actually works. Although it took us a little bit more of YouTube searching than usual because there don't appear to be tons of videos on Aira yet. Fortunately though my friend and I did find a YouTube video that showed a blind guy going through the process of using Aira. And apparently there's a button on the smart glasses that a blind person would press to initiate help from an Aira agent (someone who works in the blindness field) and who will therefore know how to give a blind person the information that he or she needs. In the YouTube video that a friend of mine and I watched with one another, the blind person in the Aira video was walking around his town trying to find a restaurant that he was supposed to meet a friend at. And in the blind person wearing the smart glasses the Aira agent was able to see the blind person's surroundings and give him specific instructions as to how to get to the specific restaurant that he'd wanted to get to. Just watching that one Aira video on YouTube opened my eyes to the fact that for a blind person, using Aira could be a huge game-changer in his or her life. I hope that I'm able to experience Aira for myself someday because I'm all about human beings moving forward with technology rather than human beings lagging behind as technology progresses. A few minutes after a friend and I'd talked about the Aira video on YouTube that we'd watched with one another, a different friend of mine texted me. In the text she'd sent me she told me that there's another app that Bookshare has created called Voice Dream that's supposed to work a lot better than the Read2Go app that I'd originally had on my phone. So after I'd received that text message from a friend I searched for Voice Dream on the app store. In searching for that particular app I realized that when in the app store VoiceOver no longer speaks aloud who created the app a person has searched for. So I had no way of knowing whether the app I'd found on the app store when I'd searched for Voice Dream was actually the correct app that my friend had recommended or not. That was the other thing: when a person was in the app store VoiceOver wouldn't speak aloud the name of the app that the VoiceOver cursor was on which made things more difficult than they used to be. So I then texted that friend of mine immediately to ask her if she knew whether the Voice Dream app was free or whether the Voice Dream app costs $14. In the same text message I'd sent her I also told her that if I had to guess, I'd bet that the app I'd found on the app store that costs $14 was probably the exact one that she'd recommended to me.