changes within
While JS is going through a very different situation, a walk with dillon asks some of the same questions that I've been asking as a result of being pregnant and looking forward to the changes in our lives that will result:
We're meeting face-to-face this week and I'm not getting the breaks that I usually take throughout the day. Because I'm tired, I've been a bit more emotional and in some cases less clear than I usually would be in a meeting like this. My intuition about summarizing issues and suggesting changes is fogged by my new primary concern - the health of me and the baby. It's hard to get too worked up about the wording of a paragraph in the standard that we're working on when the little boy inside me starts kicking and my mind drifts to a dream of playing with him on a playground or reading him a story or watching him play with J. It's both frustrating and exciting.
However, what I still get worked up about are decisions that may delay the accessibility of the Web by several years. Yesterday I spoke passionately to the committee that if we fail to push captions and audio descriptions today, 10 years from now we'll be playing catch up - again. For once, I'd like to see us break the discriminatory cycle that is part of technological evolution. We have the opportunity to ride the wave instead of watching everyone else catch it and leave us behind. This opportunity has presented itself many times before and each time we get a little closer...maybe this time we'll actually catch it...
What are my priorities now? Which of the many things I did before I got sick do I still want to do? Which of them can I do? What if I don't want to do them? What if there's some part of me that likes this slowed-down life? What if there's some part of me that likes being sick, that hides behind it, uses it for a shield?Life has definitely slowed down since being pregnant and my priorities have shifted: I don't get as upset about work as I used to, don't take successes and failures of our committee personally, and don't feel as much of the weight of responsibility to finish our project. I'm still invested, but less personally; I have some emotional distance which gives me a fresh perspective - a healthier, more objective perspective.
We're meeting face-to-face this week and I'm not getting the breaks that I usually take throughout the day. Because I'm tired, I've been a bit more emotional and in some cases less clear than I usually would be in a meeting like this. My intuition about summarizing issues and suggesting changes is fogged by my new primary concern - the health of me and the baby. It's hard to get too worked up about the wording of a paragraph in the standard that we're working on when the little boy inside me starts kicking and my mind drifts to a dream of playing with him on a playground or reading him a story or watching him play with J. It's both frustrating and exciting.
However, what I still get worked up about are decisions that may delay the accessibility of the Web by several years. Yesterday I spoke passionately to the committee that if we fail to push captions and audio descriptions today, 10 years from now we'll be playing catch up - again. For once, I'd like to see us break the discriminatory cycle that is part of technological evolution. We have the opportunity to ride the wave instead of watching everyone else catch it and leave us behind. This opportunity has presented itself many times before and each time we get a little closer...maybe this time we'll actually catch it...
posted by sp1ral at 4:01 PM
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