Sometime this summer, I’ll exit my fifth decade. Periodically, I get a little freaked out by that number. I’m on the ground floor of old age. My husband is younger than I am, so I’ll be in the old age building by myself for three years. I really hate when he’s in a different decade than I am.
But it doesn’t bother me too much. I ran my first 10K race last week. I’ve got a new job. I’m rewriting my future.
I’m not quite a dinosaur yet.
Gatekeeping Information
With the rise of the internet, people were all rah-rah about the proliferation of information. Wikipedia! Google! A billion websites! AI! Any question could be answered after a few clicks.
But it’s actually hard to get access to useful information. Every day, I inform moms about autism. They need to know what autism is, what kind of help they should get, and how to pay for it. They need to know why their kids need speech therapy and how to get summer camp paid for. They need to know how to get help for their adult children. Surprisingly, they can’t find those answers on the Internet, and they want an actual person to deliver that information to them.
Today, I spent an hour reviewing resources on New Jersey’s website for adults with disabilities. There were dozens of pages of resources on the website, but no information about the amount of a disability check. They probably hide that information because they don’t want too many people applying for disability support.
Information about the disability check wasn’t easily accessible anywhere else on the Internet. I tried twenty different Google searches and came up empty. That’s why parents are coming into our offices and hiring me to answer their questions. It’s so old school.
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A 10k is great. I can’t run a 5k because of my ankles. I can jog a couple of miles, but no more. I’m trying to do a 9 minute mile, but 9:30 is still my best.
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5th decade? Or 6th decade? If you’re turning 50, you’ll have 5 decades behind you.
Cranberry
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Sigh. It’s 6, but I’m in denial.
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I just hit 60 myself. Yikes! Hard to fathom. Hope you find a fun way to celebrate.
Your point on finding information about autism is why I think gen AI is doomed to fail in the long run (just as standard internet searches fail us now, or at least are insufficient). The information people really need or want is going to be monetized in a major way. Whether it’s the best-reviewed restaurant of a certain type, or advice on reimbursement for autism-related care, it’s all easy to structure so that certain places are advertised, and/or certain information is difficult to get, or at least difficult to get reliably.
af
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seventy five enters the chat… dave
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