About Me

To start off with: I’ve lived in Canada all my life (Toronto and St. John’s), but I’ve travelled to Florida, Massachusetts, England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and Costa Rica. I love airplane travel (as long as there are no noisy kids around me!). I’m proud to be Canadian.

I am autistic, or in other words I’m on the autism spectrum. Strictly speaking, I was diagnosed as “having Aspergers”, but (for Canada and the US, at least) that diagnosis has been melded with Autism Spectrum “Disorder” as of May 2013, with the publication of DSM V. Being autistic, and having the job I did at the start of this blog (see First Post), is why reading the blogs of other autistic adults inspired me to start one of my own about my life in general.

[Added: July 14/14] The picture now on the blog is one I took of fog rolling over St. John’s from the harbour. It’s cropped, showing only the north shore and a bit of the harbour (covered in the fog).[/end addition]

I’m a fanatic writer of SF and Fantasy, both fanfiction and original, and I devour books as well.

I love animals, in particular cats, and I have a fascination with wolves, wild cats (including the big cats), orcas, and the physiology of cephalopods.

I love the wilderness – though I don’t really have the endurance (at the moment, at least) to go hiking or camping out.

I have recently (since about the fall of 2015) started to become more active in autism advocacy, with my joining the Advisory Groups of Autism Canada and, even more importantly, the Canadian Autism Partnership Project. So far, in addition to those two positions, I was a speaker at a conference run by Autism Nova Scotia in March of 2017, and I was interviewed by the CBC about being diagnosed as an adult June 19, 2017.

So, enough about me. Go read my posts – they’re more informative!

😉 tagÂûght
(Trudy Goold)

9 thoughts on “About Me

  1. Ib Grace

    Hi tagAught,

    Was trying to find you since I like when you write on my blog. 🙂 Where’s that pic taken? Good to see you 🙂

    Ib

    Reply
    1. tagAught

      Hey, Ibby!

      If you’re referring to the picture at the top… well, I don’t know, to be honest. I had a paid theme on wordpress.com (Misty Lake), so when we moved the site over to my dad’s server, Dad downloaded the image and copied it. I’m planning to replace it at some point with one of my own pictures.

      Glad you like my comments!

      As for your other question, re my name…. Bit of a long story. “TAG” are my initials, so I’ve always used that as a nickname. When fanfiction.net started doing easy URLs, using the author’s name, numbers got added to any identical names to differentiate them. I didn’t want the number they assigned me, so I changed it to 0 – so I was tag0 (tag-zero). I then used that as my nick / username on a few other sites I joined after that, so that people would be able to find my fanfic on FFNet using that nickname.

      Then I encountered a site that either already had a “tag0”, or that needed usernames to be more than 4 characters long, so I translated the “0” to “aught” (which is an old-fashioned way of saying zero, still used in some things, including computer programming), and so I got “tagaught”. The capital “a” in “tagAught” is really just to establish that they’re two different words. (And I tend to prefer having “tag” all in lowercase letters as opposed to uppercase, for some reason – always have. The fact that it makes it look like a Java filename is just coincidence. Really.)

      😉 tagAught

      Reply
  2. Kohl von Edmonton

    I’ve been told before that I should not say that I’m autistic because I am not my “disease”. However, I don’t consider autism to be a disease, but rather an integral part of who I am. I understand there are some “people with autism” who prefer to label themselves in that way, and that’s fine, but I don’t need any neurotypicals telling me how I should view my own autism.

    By the way, I’m not sure if it was intended, but I love the paronomasic element to your nick. (-:

    Kohl von Edmonton

    Reply
    1. tagAught

      Hi!

      For an excellent overview of why most of us prefer to call ourselves “autistics” rather than “people with autism”, plus a load of links to other posts about it, I recommend Unstrange Mind’s post: I is for Identity First Language. And for my opinion on the “autism is a disease”, feel free to check out Autism, Depression, and the Difference, as well as a number of other posts on this blog and others. 🙂 (I fully agree with you being my position.)

      And actually, for the story of my nick, take a look just above at my reply to Ibby – that gives the tale. (It was a complete coincidence to start off with.) And back in April of this year, after reading G is for Giraffe by Unstrange Mind (see Recommendation: G is for Giraffe by Unstrange Mind for details and the link), I added the circumflex to the “Au” part of my nick to do a bit more in terms of pride in my identity as autistic, as well as do my part in campaigning for the end of the puzzle piece symbol.

      Anyway, I’m always glad to welcome new people to this space – so welcome!

      🙂 tagÂûght

      Reply
      1. Kohl von Edmonton

        Nice to meet you, tagÂûght. (-:

        It seems we are all in full agreement with regard to person-first language, autism as a disease, et cetera. But let me throw just a small proverbial wrench into the issue. I have OCD, or perhaps I should say I am obsessive-compulsive. For almost half my life, this has been something I’ve had to live with and manage.

        But let me tell you, when I started looking at it in the same way I look at my autism, as something that is integral to who I am, something that will never be cured and I will have to manage for the rest of my life, my symptoms started to improve significantly. I understand that OCD is not as pervasive in the brain as autism, but at least for me, looking at it in the same way has had a profoundly positive impact on my life. Just something to consider.

        Kohl

        Reply
  3. ams75

    Argh! Can’t find your e-mail addie, so… Happy Birthday! I hope you’re having a wonderful day so far and celebrate your day the whole weekend!

    Reply
  4. Donna Smith-Major

    Good Morning Trudy, I’d love to reach out and arrange a phone call with you… I am with a company called Distinctability… Brain in Hand and would love to chat with you more about it!!

    Reply

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