BiPolar Networking

I've spent about 5 hours surfing the Net since yesterday's post, and it's incredible what a huge BiPolar Community there is out there. The World Wide Wonderland is doing it's stuff!

Here are some of the better sites I found:

• The X-tremists' Journal - a forum for BiPolars of all creeds, shapes and sizes. It is a LiveJournal project (LiveJournal is competitor of Blogger in a sense, I suppose) so you cannot post to the forum unless you have a LiveJournal account. But anybody can post comments to the original members' posts. Come on Blogger, why don't we have something like this?
  
• The About.com BiPolar Chatroom - man, this chatroom is busy! Popped in this morning and there were about 20 people all typing stuff in real time. A great support resource - any time you need to commiserate (or celebrate?) with BiPolar buddies you can just pop in. Apparently you'll always find somebody there.
  
• The Icarus Project - I'll quote directly from this site as I really like its mission and intentions: "...underground media project created by and for people struggling with bipolar disorder and other dangerous gifts that are commonly labeled as mental illnesses. We believe that when we learn to take care of ourselves, the intertwined threads of madness and creativity can be tools of inspiration and hope in a repressed and damaged world. Our goal is to help people like ourselves feel less alienated, and to allow us—both as individuals and as a community—to tap into the true potential that lies between brilliance and madness."
  "The Icarus Project is creating a new culture and language that resonates with our actual experiences of “mental illness” rather than trying to fit our lives into a conventional framework"

This is really exciting stuff. With all us BiPolars connected who knows what the possibilities are? We could start a commercial portal where we all support each other - "Buy Polar.com"? Or maybe we could take a cue from the gay and lesbian movement and start a "BiPolar and proud of it" campaign.

I was convinced I was going to have another "pretty shitty" day today, but I've found all of these networks so exciting that it looks like "In-the-Pink" is going to be in charge. (In case you're wondering "In-the-Pink" has no gay connotations - it is an old established term that means "in good health", and for BiPolar Guy it means "in good spirits")