My New Year's Resolution: The Second Three Months

This post is a little late, but having watched how much I have kept my New Year's Resolution for the first three months of this year, I also have taken note of how I have kept it in the next three weeks (April through June).  So far I noticed I have: 

-worked at least ten full-time work weeks
-finished two more books and got farther along on seven
-finished reading seventeen* more graphic novels and started on another one
-came up with two new "Autistic Fairy Tales" and five new novel ideas
-worked on all my fairy tales and at least eight different novel ideas
-wrote another poem and started on another one
-started working on the last few posts of The Autistic Mule (formerly Ben's Blog) for the first time this year
-drew nine more pictures
-finished four more watercolor drawings**
-made seven more receipt coasters, as well as a vase and my Autistic Pride rainbow infinity from receipts
-made at least 100 produce bags and 100 grocery bags into plarn
-saw my friend Jack twice, my friend Tyler three times, and my friend Erin once
-passed my Spring 2016 Disability Studies class with an A***
-gone all of April without wearing blue in defiance of the April "Light It Up Blue" campaign by groups like Autism Speaks, who depict autism like a car wreck and do not provide autism services.

Thus far, I would say I have stuck to my resolution pretty well.

Edit
*originally sixteen
**added fifteen minutes after publishing this post
***added nine days after original publication
 

Some Reflections on the 81 Birthday of the Dalai Lama

Today is the eighty-first birthday of the fourteenth Dalai Lama, the pope-like figure to many of my fellow Buddhists. I have always admired his equanimity and compassionate demeanor while he has lost his country, home, loved ones, and everything while the Chinese station troops in his native Tibet, drain its resources, set up missiles, overwhelm with Chinese immigrants, and impose abortions and sterilizations on its women-in contrast to Westerners living relatively comfortab...le lives fighting each other on-line, and demanding safe spaces and trigger warnings whenever they are presented with views they disagree with when they are college students expected to take part in intellectual discourse, but judge based on a person's number of followers on social media. I think I will forever admire this man as a model to Buddhist practitioners everywhere long after he is gone from this earth, happy that, after that time, he will (according to Tibetan Buddhist belief) be reborn as the next Dalai Lama from a series of reincarnations going back to Tibetan Buddhist saint Chenrizig. Namaste.

Photo from United Nation's for a Free Tibet (UK)'s Facebook page