This guest post is by Logan Ferando, a young man on the autism spectrum who was diagnosed with ASD and will be attending the University of Massachusetts Boston in the class of 2027. Logan is applying for the Spring 2023 Making a Difference Autism Scholarship via the nonprofit KFM Making a Difference, started by me, Kerry Magro. I was nonverbal till 2.5 and diagnosed with autism at 4 and you can read more about my organization here. Autistics on Autism: Stories You Need to Hear About What Helped Them While Growing Up and Pursuing Their Dreams, our nonprofit’s new book, was released on March 29, 2022 on Amazon here for our community to enjoy featuring the stories of 100 autistic adults.
At the beginning of the summer of 2020 amid a global pandemic, I was constantly bored and yearning for normalcy, until I implemented a way to spend weekends with my father. After spending months barely leaving the house and looking at various Flickr accounts, I was finally able to hop into my dad’s Dodge Caliber and drive across eastern Connecticut to do one thing: take photos of retail buildings. While I would photograph anything I could, I mainly focused on abandoned buildings, as well as older-style ones that could be renovated at any minute. While it may not sound that interesting, it gave me something to look forward to during a time when it was hard to go to a place to have fun. Most importantly, this hobby was one of my first experiences relating to a major passion in my life, which is documentation and preservation.
I’ve never really been a social person. It’s partially due to being on the Autism spectrum, which in my case comes with a certain awkwardness that makes friendships and social conformity pretty difficult, but I also don’t consistently care about having a social life. Many times I’d rather just spend my free time alone. Instead, where I tend to shine is in academics. I didn’t even like academics in my early schooling years, it was just something I performed well at. Learning more in-depth about history throughout middle school changed that, since not only did I enjoy the content that was being taught, but I finally had a use for my knack for memory and dates of time. My high school history classes amplified this love, and I felt more engaged and enthusiastic than ever when it came to the subject.
This is also around the time when I began to archive my surroundings with a camera. I wasn’t changing the world or turning many heads, but it satisfied me, and unbeknownst to me, it would lead me to what I would want to do with my future. It wasn’t until a couple of months ago that I had little to no clue what I wanted to do with my life, and despite people telling me not to be, I often felt nervous about my future. Archiving was not only one of the first but also one of the few career paths that felt like a good fit for me. It seemed like a combination made in heaven. Not only could I work with history, but I could also use my love of documentation for a meaningful career, instead of a way to kill a few hours. It gives a purpose to the countless hours I’ve spent on Google Maps, and the thousands of beautifully mundane photos I’ve taken.
After many years of living a life that’s been spent alone, where any desire to do something outside of school has been spent in front of a computer screen or at some place a family member drove me to, I’m finally ready to fully embrace everything there is to offer, taking life’s opportunities and sprinting with them so I can see the world and feel unadulterated happiness and satisfaction. Going into archiving gives me a sense of meaning and endless amounts of hope for a time that rapidly runs towards me, something I wouldn’t even dream of having even just a year ago. It presents the opportunity to play a piece in preserving history on a level much bigger than what I do on my own as a mere hobby. I’ll be able to contribute to the essential cause of accurately documenting important history. While I’m already archiving on a small scale, the path I’ll embark on to the profession will provide me with an affirmation of what my future holds, as well as a personal purpose throughout my adult life. In addition, I believe that going into higher education for a career path of interest and then staying in that career until retirement, in comparison to begrudgingly being in a career I dislike, will provide me with both literal and mental success and stability that is essential to me, and I’ll also be able to be a functioning member of society.
Follow my journey on Facebook, my Facebook Fan Page, Tiktok, Youtube & Instagram.
My name is Kerry Magro, a professional speaker and best-selling author who is also on the autism spectrum that started the nonprofit KFM Making a Difference in 2011 to help students with autism receive scholarship aid to pursue post-secondary education. Help support me so I can continue to help students with autism go to college by making a tax-deductible donation to our nonprofit here.
Autistics on Autism: Stories You Need to Hear About What Helped Them While Growing Up and Pursuing Their Dreams, was released on March 29, 2022 on Amazon here for our community to enjoy featuring the stories of 100 autistic adults. 100% of the proceeds from this book go back to our nonprofit to support initiatives like our autism scholarship program. In addition, this autistic adult’s essay you just read will be featured in a future volume of this book as we plan on making this into a series of books on autistic adults.
