Thank you so much for reading my blog. I'm Randy, and I am the dad of a five year-old girl diagnosed with autism almost two and half years ago. I've launched this blog mostly to help cope with this experience which has presented challenges emotionally, financially, physically and spiritually.
I work in Hollywood, CA. I am a Creative Director for movie marketing. My job is to get you to see a movie or watch a television show. I spent much of my career as a film editor before becoming management a few years back. Before autism, I saw myself as a pretty successful guy making his way up the ranks from working in a video store in Philly as a teenager to running a department in Hollywood. Autism has shaken who I am and how I see myself to the core.
I'm sure that my experience is common to all of us in the autism community. We need to unite and help each other. If this blog attracts like-minded people, I will feel empowered and in control when we all know that I am neither (but if I lie a little to myself to help me get through this, who cares...). Surely autism had been the most far reaching event in the history of our family. We've tried different things that have worked, others that haven't and we still search every evening for the next idea. Sometimes we are spinning our wheels and other times we've had astounding success which keeps us going. Everyday is a new adventure.
The next chapter in our journey is the launch of www.AutismFreeZone.com.
You are probably wondering what is www.AutismFreeZone.com? Here's my idea...
AutismFreeZone is the first community based web-site focused on helping families impacted with autism deal with the financial hardships that have overwhelmed us. As our economy struggles, so too do we who want nothing more than to fund our kid's diet, school program, interventions and more, yet we are not sure how to do it. Our family's approach is to just spend the money and deal with the consequences later, "This is our kid, how can we not do everything to help her" is what my wife always says. I believe it too, but here we are well into the journey and flailing financially.
Autismfreezone will save people money in many ways. The first thing is that there will be no membership fee for autismfreezone.com.
Next, the members will drive our initiatives, such as, which companies and products we need to get discounts from to benefit the largest percentage of members.
Here are some bullet points to help you understand some of our ideas that will manifest more fully with time.
1) A community based, password protected website for families with children on the spectrum.
2) A free-market (a la "Freecycle" for autism), where families can give those things they are done with and get needed items and services from each other for free.
3) Discounts from companies that have products which are needed by the community.
4) A knowledge portal that can be easily navigated.
5) Social networking tools, such as, video posts, podcasts, blogs and chats.
6) Sweepstakes, profit sharing and fund-raising to benefit the member families directly.
We need to have as MANY MEMBERS as possible. Power in numbers! The more people in our group the more incentive for companies, organizations and the government to listen and give us what we need: FINANCIAL RELIEF.
So for now sign-up. We will be sending out emails to keep you updated.
We will do a pre-launch to show you how AutismFreeZone is going to help all of our members save money through the power of community. This is slated for the end of May.
Please feel free to comment, add your experiences and to help us build a place where all families impacted by autism can join together as we share our journey.
Families, THE TIME IS NOW, people are starting to hear us. We need to unite, for our kids and for our futures.
In my business, we say:
"Its show time!"
Best,
Randy
Be Sure to Check-Out "THE MOM BLOG" Authored by my wife Royce
