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This first post is supposed to be 'introductory' so here goes. I am the blogger formally known as Turtle, I forget why I elected to use my given birth name during this project but I'm hoping the reason will transpire within the next few sentences. Turtle's Page of Joy was my main blog until about a year ago, and I write occasionally on a 'popular social networking site.' I arrived on Ouch out of curiosity about disability, having exhausted the potential of the Guinness Book Of Hit Singles, believing myself to be a rubbish disabled person.

To say Ouch has made me a better person, disabled or otherwise, would be a gross exaggeration. It would be a great advert, but a gross exaggeration. That said, it has made me more aware of the parts of my identity marked 'disabled' and how they relate with the parts marked 'everything else'. They don't always get along, sometimes they actively clash. For something with a 'disability' my disabled identity isn't half good at suffocating everything else some days. Not every day.

A mantra for some people seems to be 'I don't let my disability define me' but it's not something I personally need to remind myself of. I don't trust myself to do much, but I do trust any fixation on disability issues I wake up with to even itself out to reasonable levels come the lunchtime edition of Neighbours. Allowing it to come to the fore from time to time, I think, means that the issues and inequities we face as disabled people aren't forgotten or glossed over. Unless disability is your job, of course, then 'from time to time' doesn't cut it. Yes, I should emphasise that if you have Disability or Diversity or Activist or Wonky Looking People in your job title, working by my philosophy may well get you fired. If this has already happened, I can only apologise. Sorry.

I dunno, it's not something I do. I'm a history student, last time I emphasised disability in my line of 'work' it nearly got me chucked out of Gender in 20th Century France.

These blogs will be influenced by the understanding of disability I have developed in my 22 years on this planet, juggled with the dissertation I am writing over the university summer vacation. I will try not to veer into how much I hate Katie Melua, but it's not something I can guarantee. Because I do. I really, truly do.

That was an introduction, right?

I hope to be bringing a brand new blog out soon, because my parts of my old one date from a 'dark time' . You can look through the archives of what has never been called TPoJ, i'm reasonably sure the last entry was about the indignity of eating nachos. That wasn't the dark time, by the way.

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