I have been in hypomanic writing mode for 4 days now since starting this blog (or is it 2 weeks? A month? It’s always one thing or the other, it seems). Yesterday I completed two powerful pieces (Marco’s 3 Noble Truths and How to talk to the voices inside your head), went to bed with the usual micro-dose Seroquel, and woke up feeling mostly okay. My usual terror dreams were mild, I have come across some podcasts by Derek Prince on the subject of grace which help me when I am anxious in the night,and I also play chess in the night on the phone. That’s another story (a new addiction): I play the computer against the phone, and as soon as the computer gets a decided advantage, I take over to win. I am a passable chess player, but watching two computer grandmasters play each other makes me realize how bad I am at chess. I do hope that the exercise is making me sharper.
All this is highly addictive of course (the writing, the coffee, the Seroquel, the chess… oy vey). Is it time to quit and sober up, across all dimensions? No doubt. Especially as I am leading two events today, and have to show up in good shape (calm and rested). It’s hard to quit when you are having fun, though. That’s the essence of the bipolar condition, by the way. We are always living on the knife-edge between inspiration and insanity. We kind of worship the hypomanic states like a God. And we like it that way. This makes it hard to quit.
Anyway: I have 3 hours to sober up (exercise usually helps), but I feel compelled to share a great truth that just occurred to me: bipolars are closer to God than ordinary people! William James believed so, at least. I copy here the quote from the sidebar of this very website as evidence:
“William James believed, with many another religious thinker, that the sinner is closer to God than the conventionally good man, because life is given us as a passion; it is, as Keats said, a vale of soul-making […] Social discipline weakens and disables, leaving no merit for the virtuous man who is such only because his spirit is too weak to be tempted. This is, no doubt, why saints and apostles more often consort with thieves and prostitutes than with bankers and aldermen” – Jacques Barzum, from a preface in William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience
Q.E.D. (if your Latin is rusty, that means “it is proven”).
More seriously: it’s a strange time for me, because I am debating the proper balance between a public versus a private blog. Yesterday in the How to talk to your voices article I shared some very intense vulnerability, which I then cross-posted to my main author blog, and also intend to include that post in an update email to my entire friends-and-family list of 260 soon. Many of these people already think I am crazy, and as I already mentioned, I don’t want to give them additional evidence for that. “Guilty as charged”, is the proper response.
I take comfort in the hope that nobody is reading this, yet. But if you are, please let me know via the comments!
PS: I enjoy self-deprecating humor (in case you haven’t noticed), but there is a method to my madness here: I am trying to accumulate a sufficient body of work to go public with the two new blogs. And consequently I am shitting in my pants from fear. It’s normal.
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