New Year's Special: One Life To Write One, Two Years To Repeat

New Year's Special: One Life To Write One, Two Years To Repeat

As I explained in my installment "How This All Started," my original plan for my book "The Greattastic Adventures: Miracle Child" was to write about my time getting ready to go to college, and some of my college experiences, as someone with autism, but I would write the chapters shortly after the event depicted happened. The problem was that I didn't know what to write about because I didn't know what was necessary for the climax because the climax hadn't happened yet! So the solution was to start a blog (and eventually a podcast) to replace the college/adult timeline and write THREE books about my childhood experiences!

I did run into one more problem. I knew I didn't want to just write about my autism journey; I also wanted to talk about my grief journey. I realized when I was working on the master outline including my grief journey in the same binding, would cause a constant struggle between both stories. So I decided to write a spin-off book that follows my grief journey with S.M. (and a few others, including Elizabeth, who died ten years ago tonight) and how I accepted it all! The two best parts, all of the proceeds go to Sam's Fans, and I planned not to tell S.M.'s family until Thread of Hope in October 2022. For context, I've been writing this book since 2018!

I ended up telling S.M.'s mom, Nikki, in September 2022 instead since I'd kept this secret for four years, and quite honestly, I couldn't do it anymore. So it is with great joy that I announce that my new book, Once In a Lifetime: A Song For Sam, will be coming out this March for her birthday!

Now the person who edits my books, Amy, is actually a family friend I know through my "sisters." The system we developed for editing my books is I send her the rough draft; she leaves comments/suggestions on the Google Doc, and I go through and accept them. Then we do that whole process a second time. Her daughter got married the weekend after Thanksgiving, so Amy couldn't go through Once In a Lifetime the second time until the weekend of December 10th.

When I published my first book, I also learned that self-publishing is stressful, and I don't handle that kind of stress well! With that plus Amy not being able to read the book earlier, but me still wanting to hit the deadline of S.M.'s birthday week…I am about to become a very horrible human! To alleviate some of the stress, until the book is formatted, I will not be posting anything to Rules for a Greattastic Life. I'm hoping to start season 6 in Mid-February which I think is realistic. If something changes, I will let you know.

Mat Kearney is S.M.'s favorite artist. I'm telling you, this man wrote the soundtrack to her life. I don't mean she listened to him all the time (though she did that); most of his songs have lyrics that seemed to be catered to her story. For example, one of the lyrics in his song "In the Middle" is, "Twenty-five here I am with freshman LPs one life to write one, two years to repeat."

That makes me happy because that line is the best way to describe this situation. I'm 25, it took my whole life to write Miracle Child, and now two years later, I'm publishing Once In A Lifetime: A Song For Sam!

I hope you have a Greattastic 2023!

J. Mitchie Ulibarri

Before I go, I want to congratulate my friend Jane, who got married earlier today (New Year's Eve)! I can't wait to see what's in store for you next!

Christmas Special: Night Before Christmas (Greattastic Edition)

 Christmas Special: Night Before Christmas (Greattastic Edition)

Twas two days before Christmas when all through my town, the temperature dropped, and snow floated down. Ryan had come home from Chicago, you see, to spend the holiday with my family and me! We played tons of games, and good times were had, but none were outside cuz the weather was bad.

On the day before Christmas, we mapped out our day to try to keep stresses far, far away! We cleaned up a bit cuz "Santa was coming" and headed to church at 5:30 something. We sang Christmas carols all throughout Mass, and everyone there was dressed with some class. We couldn't stop singing as Dad drove us home; we're a very musical family, don't you know?

He parked the car, and we dashed through the snow, for my brothers, and I knew exactly where to go! With me on piano and Josh on his drum, Ryan and Luke grabbed their guitars and started to strum. We played "White Christmas," and I'll tell you this, with a bit of practice, man, it was bliss!

When dinner was ready, we went and said grace, and when we had finished, we filled up our plates. We ate and told stories, and like Christmases past, we hoped that this holiday season would last.

I'm telling you this for one simple reason; in fact, it's at the heart of this holiday season. Love those around you and enjoy their company, cuz to be happy, that's really all you need! For if we choose to love and to be kind, we will all indeed lead Greattastic Lives! Before I go, I just need to say Rules for a Greattastic Life will Return on New Year's Eve day!

Season 5 Blog 30 (Finale) True Confidence

 True Confidence

Back in mid-October, I got a text from my ex-girlfriend Gabby, in which she asked me if I wanted to meet up. I told her I would think about it, but quite honestly I forgot. On Thanksgiving night, after dinner, Gabby texted me again to check back in.

As you might know, I broke up with Gabby on my family vacation last summer. I'm not going to go into detail about the circumstances of our breakup, but basically, neither of us were emotionally ready for a relationship, and it had to happen over vacation because the situation was not good for either of our mental healths. When I first mentioned our break up, it was at the very end of the installment I made about that family vacation. Narratively speaking, the breakup came out of nowhere, because I wasn't going to write an installment every time I questioned the relationship. Thinking back on it now, in a way that was art imitating life. While there were a few fights leading up to it, I was trying to put the breakup off, so when I admitted to myself that it had to happen and did it, I think it blindsided her. All this to say, I felt like I owed her a meet-up.

Last Saturday, December 3, we decided to get coffee at Crimson Cup, but she said that there was a location closer to the middle of both of us. She gave me the address and when I pulled up, I was slightly freaked out because it was effectively a warehouse. We got out of our cars and we tried to get in, but the doors were locked.

“Excuse me,” a man said, “who are you looking for?”

“Just trying to get coffee!” I replied.

“Oh sorry!” he said, “This is the Innovation Lab… It's not a coffee shop.”

For a little more context, I found out later that Crimson Cup is really interested in helping people start up their own coffee shops, so they have this lab to teach people how to make professional coffee and make a business plan. “Ah,” Gabby said as the man walked away, “Silver Oak College is a couple minutes away, do you just want to walk around there?”

My first girlfriend Caroline and I had a very on-again-off-again relationship. And while she is the only ex I have ever officially gotten back together with, I would be lying if I told you that I hadn’t thought about getting back together with some of the others shortly after the break ups. I bring this up because as Gabby and I were walking around the campus, nothing happened because I think I’m finally confident with myself when I’m on my own!

Season 5 Thanksgiving Special: Lost In Tradition

 Season 5 Thanksgiving Special: Lost In Tradition

OCALICONLINE accidentally worked out perfectly for me schedule-wise because the conference happened a week before Thanksgiving, and I only had to work Monday and Tuesday the week of the holiday. This meant that when I drove up to New Story the day before the conference, I only had three school days before break.

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, at 7:30 p.m., I picked Noah up at his house and we went to dinner at Applebee's (or “A-pplib-ees” as Noah calls it). While we were there, they started playing Christmas music. Usually, I'm very anti-Christmas music before Thanksgiving, but last year my phone stopped working shortly before Christmas, and I didn't get to listen to my Christmas playlist as much as I'd wanted, so I was here for the early music.

After I dropped Noah off at home, I went to my parents' house, but before I went inside I realized that everyone was at my childhood neighbor’s house. I ran in and saw, Megan and Rachel, their parents Stephen and Robin, our friends Tim and Kristin, and Ryan who was back from Chicago. After hanging out for a little bit, my brothers and I drove to the airport and picked up, our grandpa, Pop-pop, and our aunt and uncle, Eva and Zach.

The next day, we went out to lunch at a place downtown called The North Market, and that night I showed Pop-pop, Eva, Zach, and Dad the recording of my OCALICONLINE session (which I only have access to for a short amount of time). On Thanksgiving Day at 1:30, people started showing up. First Mom’s parents/step-parents (Nimba, Papa, Grandpa, and Nana) got here. Then my cousins’ family, the Mitreys (Aunt Melissa, Uncle Andy, Alex/his girlfriend Emma, Maci, Nicholas, and Ellie) arrived, followed very closely by, Aunt Cyndi, her fiance, Jeremy and her kids Kaitlyn and Cameron, and eventually my cousin Austin.

After my family dinner, I went over to my “sister’s” parents' house to see, August, Arden, Kid, Marshall, Barbara, Rich, and a Priest friend that they had over. To my surprise, they were also homing a puppy named Jr. who was in training to be a seeing-eye dog over the holiday. After I hung out with them for about an hour, I returned to my parents’ house and we started playing a game called Catch Phrase (if you don't know what that is look it up and buy it it's amazing!)

Finally, on Friday night, Megan, Rachel, Stephen, and Robin, came over to make cookies, and visit with Pop-pop, Eva, Zach, and Austin, and my parents' best friends from college, Ron and Anita came too!

I'm not gonna lie, I struggled to write this installment… but I think I know why. I think the most Thanksgiving-y Thanksgiving I've experienced since I was a little kid, was Thanksgiving 2020 because Austin came and made my family actually laugh for the first time since the pandemic hit. What I’m saying is usually I'm very good at living in the moment, but on Thanksgiving and other Holidays, I tend to get lost in family traditions… I don't want to speak for everyone, but until someone fights me on it I'm going to say that most people would agree with me. So I'm making a resolution, for Christmas, and all future holidays to make an extra effort to live in the moment!

Hope you all had a Grattastic Thanksgiving!

J. Mitchie Ulibarri

Season 5 Who Am I? Blog 29: OCALICONLINE- Only One Place I Can Go

 OCALICONLINE- Only One Place I Can Go

Last Monday, November 14th, after school I walked around the building, saying goodbye to my coworkers and telling them I would not see them till next Monday (two days after the posting of this installment). One of my co-workers Savannah, who you, the audience, all know as the bride in “A Wedding In Wooster,” was helping out in the after-school program, and she asked, “Wait, why aren't you going to be here for the rest of the week?”

OCALICONLINE was happening from Tuesday to Friday. As a brief refresher, OCALICON is an annual conference with speakers to promote awareness about students with autism and low-incidence disabilities, and this year it's online. My public speaking mentor, and family friend Dr. Brooks, along with Noah's soccer coach Katie and I, were doing a presentation called “Using Contact-Based Interventions to Create Inclusive Learning Spaces.” I didn't blame Savannah for forgetting because the presentation for OCALICONLINE had to be pre-recorded. So at the end of September, I had to take a half-day to record it, and on top of that in October I took another half day to do a separate public speaking event in Dr. Brooks’ class.

While I was excited, since I've been working to get to OCALICON since the summer of 2019, I was slightly disappointed that it was an online event. “Like yeah,” I said to Savannah, “this is going to look great on my resume, and I'm still going to be able to network, but if it was in person I would have gotten to stay in this Swanky Hotel downtown and…you know me, I'm way too social for virtual!”

Savannah laughed and said, “Mitch, you're already off, don't just stay at home…go to a coffee shop and attend. Treat yourself!”

“Savannah, You're a genius!” I exclaimed.

On Tuesday at 11:45 a.m. I went to Crimson Cup Coffee, got a frozen hot chocolate, and waited 15 minutes until the conference kicked off. The conference started with the three keynote speakers, Haben Girma (the first Deafblind person to graduate from Harvard Law), Judy Heumann (who has been a disability advocate her entire life after contracting polio and becoming wheelchair-bound at age two), and Temple Grandin (an American scientist who has Autism and is most famous for her work on animal behavior and for the humane treatment of animals going to slaughter). As I watched I thought to myself, someday I'm going to be a keynote speaker!

I spent Tuesday through Thursday, going to presentations, getting people's emails for later networking, and learning a lot about advocacy and what other people are doing. Then on Friday morning, at 8:45 our session started. It began with Dr. Brooks explaining the class she teaches at OSU to incoming gen ed teachers on what inclusion is. She gave some stats about how many special needs kids are in the gen ed system, and how she knows me. I then took over and gave a condensed version, of the presentation I give in her class, which is basically a bunch of stories about my experiences in school. And finally, Katie took over and talked about her and Dr. Brooks’ findings about the impact of my presentation.

Basically, each time before I would speak in Dr. Brooks’ class, the students would fill out a survey, and they would fill out the same one afterward. I'm not even going to try to touch on the statistics, mostly because I’m the least academic out of the three of us, and I couldn't do it justice in that format, but in extremely dumbed-down terms, having someone on the spectrum explain their story, put a face to Autism and positively impacted these incoming teacher’s understanding of why inclusion is critical to their role as teachers. The recording ended with Dr. Brooks saying, “Hope everyone has a great day…or a Greattastic day as Mitch would say!”

“You beat me to the punch.” Recording me chimed in. As the session ended, I smiled because I knew that there's only one place I can go from here- Up.

Have a Greattastic day and be safe!

J. Mitchie Ulibarri

Season 5 Who Am I? Blog 28: What's The Verdict?

What's The Verdict?

After work on Saturday, April 30th, 2022, Arden drove to August’s apartment. When she drove up she saw an older woman wearing a yellow sun hat and yellow pants sitting in the garden watering plants. August came out to meet her and after they hugged the two walked inside. As they passed, the older woman yelled, “Hi Arden!”

Back in February, I saw August and Kid waiting in the circle when she had come to town. We hung out as much as we could, but August, Ben, and I all needed to get to bed since we all had a big day coming up. Despite the fact that we didn't really do anything, August inspired me to once again make a surprise trip up to Colorado. I didn't want to go anywhere for the upcoming spring break because when I went to Colorado over spring break 2020 the world ended so there was just a little too much PTSD. However, I had only used one PTO day for my cousin Paige's wedding, so I had a few to kill.

Kid had a project for her photography class due on Easter Monday 2022, so on Holy Saturday she and I had a photoshoot. When we got back to her house to upload the photos to her computer Kid was texting someone very excitedly. I asked her what was going on and she replied, “Arden is moving to Cincinnati!” I immediately called Arden and she said that she was still “trying to get her ducks in a row,” but so her roommate Taylor could plan, she needed to know in two weeks. Coincidentally two weeks was when August and I had planned for me to go up to Colorado and surprise Arden and Ben.

I flew in on Thursday, April 28th, 2022. That night I met August’s roommate, Gill, and we surprised Ben, though it was not as epic as we had hoped. Now, August and Gill lived in Arvada, which is an hour away from Fort Collins, where Arden and Taylor lived. Arden was working for a group of hospitals that she would rotate between. She worked at one on that Saturday that was very close to Arvada.

On Saturday morning, August and I got coffee and did some work that we had to do. When we had finished, we rushed to the thrift store and bought a yellow sun hat, and yellow maternity pants. When we got back to the apartment I threw on one of August’s shirts, the sun hat, and the pants, and eagerly waited in the garden for Arden to arrive.

“Hi Arden!” I yelled as they passed. The look on Arden’s face when she realized that I was the older woman was priceless… It looked like she was malfunctioning. We spent the night, hanging out, talking to Gill, and then we all watched a movie. When we were getting ready for bed I asked Arden, “So…what's the verdict? Are you moving to Cincinnati?”

In typical Arden fashion, she replied, “Well… It's still a little unclear, but that's the hope!”

On Friday, November 4, 2022, I drove to Cincinnati to celebrate Arden finally moving back to Ohio! As I pulled into town it was hard not to laugh at myself. As you may remember, Arden moved to Colorado at the very beginning of this series, and I spent the entirety of Season 1 having an existential crisis because she and my other “sisters” were moving away. While that whole situation was important because it forced me to grow, I think it’s hilarious that I spent so much time stressing out about it when now 3 of the 4 now live back in Ohio! The moral of the story here is don’t stress out because, in the end, everything works out the way it is supposed to!

Have a Greattastic day and be safe!

J. Mitchie Ulibarri

Season 5 Who Am I? Blog 27: The Portal (Part 1)

 The Portal

In the first season finale of this series, I helped my “sister” Arden make a surprise trip back from Colorado for Christmas. From that point on, these surprises became a regular occurrence in our friend group, The Greattastic Adventurers, even becoming the main story arc of season two. In November of 2021, August followed in Arden’s Footsteps and moved to Colorado. By the end of January 2022, I knew that August’s (now ex) boyfriend, Ben, would be moving out to Colorado too, and it just so happened that he moved there on the same day that I ended up moving into my apartment. Finally, “the circle” as it is lovingly called is a cul-de-sac that is right outside my parents' house.

Originally I had planned to move out of my parents' house about a week before it ended up happening because the bureaucracy of getting approved delayed my plans. Two days before I moved into my apartment, Mom, Luke, Shane, and I, went to the store, bought a few things for my room, and then went to the apartment to open my mattress and let it air out. Coincidentally while we were there, August texted me and asked for my address and if I had moved in yet. I said no and explained the updated plan.

The following day August called me. At first, our conversation was normal but I could tell that she was a little out of breath. “Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah…” she said, “I’m in the Rockies, and it's so cold I'm pretty sure I'm going to die!” I laugh at the dramatic way she said it and that egged her on. She kept getting more and more dramatic until she eventually exclaimed, “Oh my gosh, what’s that?!” After a brief pause, she continued, “Mitchie! Go outside! I see a portal that opens to the circle!”

All I wanted to do was go to bed because I knew that moving out was going to be a big ordeal. As a result, this was a very rare occasion in which I was not in the mood for shenanigans. After she tried to prompt me for a little bit, the phone crackled and she hung up. I texted her to see if she was okay and she just continued to prompt me to go to the circle.

After about five minutes, Kid texted me. The text basically said that she was doing homework, but August was harassing her saying to send me out to the circle to see “a portal of some sort.” As soon as I read the word “portal” in Kid’s text, it all clicked. August was in town, to drive with Ben to Colorado and she had asked me for my address, hoping that I had moved in, so she could surprise me at my new place. Since I had not she had to come up with a half-baked slightly lamer plan.

“August, I know you're in town!” I said after she pick up the phone.

“No, I'm not, I'm in Rocky Mountain National Park!” she replied.

“Fine!” I said, “Send me a picture!”

She sent me one and it was indeed of her at Rocky Mountain National Park. However, being the genius that I am, I saved the photo to my camera roll, and it was time-stamped for 2:30 pm the day before!

“Oh…I didn't know you could do that…” August said as I ran out of my parents' house to meet her.

To Be Continued…