Welcome to the Blogger Spotlight Interview. This week we have Sean from The Autism Dada taking part in the Blogger Spotlight interview.
If you would like to take part, and your blog is under six months old, or has been re-launched in the last six months, please email me randommusings29@gmail.com
1 Firstly, tell us a little bit about yourself
Talking about myself is something I have always found a little difficult but here goes.
I was born way back when, well back in 1970. I grew up in the West Midlands in a town called Brierley Hill which is just down the road from Dudley.
I was never into reading and writing as a kid, and I always found learning difficult. However, when home computers became more affordable I became hooked.
Cutting a long story short, I went back into education and found my niche in software development.
To do this though I left the Midlands and moved down to Reading, Berkshire – where I lived for around 19 years on and off.
Moving forward a few years, after many years of the Friday/Saturday night out, I’m now living in Poole, Dorset (by the sea) with my wife and 2 young children.
2 What is your blog’s name and what is it about?
My blogs name is “The Autism Dada”.
I came up with the name because of my son and his diagnosis of ASD. The Dada part came because one of the only words my son says is Dada, so it stuck.
What it’s about has really changed over its short lifetime.
The original idea was to have a place where I could document our lives, talk about autism and talk about the journey we are travelling.
Although just talking only about autism at the beginning felt therapeutic, I did think most of what I blogged about felt like all the negative stuff. I really didn’t want to portray a negative vibe.
My son has a diagnosis of ASD but life doesn’t stop, life doesn’t have to be different. So my blog evolved.
I wanted to make sure it gave people a positive feel. So now my blog shows our life and what we do, as well as the odd post on ASD.
In it you get to see our adventures. I talk about the fun and not so fun stuff and I also have a place where I can just talk autism if I want to.
3 Why did you decide to start a blog?
As I say above, it really started because I wanted to share the journey we were taking. As we learnt more about autism, as we learnt more about the skills we needed to learn, I wanted to document it.
I wanted to provide a place where anyone that may be at the beginning of their journey, maybe received an diagnosis for themselves or one of their children, could come along to read about our journey and hopefully relate.
4 Do you have any goals for your blog?
Yet another difficult question to answer. What I would love to do is have people read my blog and just click. See something in there that they can say – life doesn’t have to change.
See that although sometimes you have to approach things differently, you can still go on that trip, still go to that day out and still have a fulfilled life.
Of course, if that meant I could spend more time blogging and less time working, well, that would be perfect. In all honesty though, I would prefer it that people just enjoy what they read and relate.
5 Tell us one random fact about you
I’ve been spending 5 minutes trying to think of something different.
I could say I love motorbikes and was in a crash once or something like that.
But I think the most interesting is that we once were in a motorway service shop and Simon Cowell came into the shop. However, instead of walking up to him (like we saw many walking after him into the shop) we decided to blank and walk in the opposite direction. It’s a no from me I’m afraid.
6 What is the best piece of blog related advice you have received so far?
The best bit of advice I’ve would say I received is to be social. Join in, contribute and share.
7 What is your favourite thing about blogging?
There are two things I enjoy about blogging, that said, they both relate into one.
The first thing is it gives me somewhere to show my pictures. I love taking photos, especially when we can get out to interesting places and I love to share them.
The second things I enjoy is that I can talk about anything. If I want to talk about a news article I read recently then I can. It’s there for as long as I want to share it, and I can look back in the future and say ‘Oh yes, I remember that’.
8 Is there anything you would do differently if you were starting over knowing what you know now?
There’s one thing I would have done, and it may be something people may want to consider. It’s quite a techie thing. I would have checked expired domains for a name that had more domain authority.
That said, if I had done that, although it may have had the higher DA, the name would not have been my own unique name.
The name of my blog has a meaning to me; so I probably wouldn’t do that differently on second thought.
9 Anything else you’d like to share with us?
I really just want to share how much fun I am having at the moment.
When I first started and was only blogging about autism and nothing else, I kind of lost a bit of motivation.
It was only at the point that I thought ‘I want to talk about the fun we have’ that I started to enjoy it.
Find your fun in what you write about and just enjoy it.
10 Where can we find you? (blog link and links to any social media)
You can find my blog over at http://www.theautismdada.com
My Twitter name is @TheAutismDada
I recently also started snapchat as – theautismdada
I’ve yet to start a Facebook Page for this site
Thank you for sharing.