Personal Power Failure
It was a sunny day in Cape Town yesterday. Plenty seagulls were about when I took my dogs beach walking.
Today is sunny again, but not my mood. The damn electricity has come back on, and with it, the same tedious "gotta work" routine.
All that's happens, it seems, is that Cape Town's power has come back on, and my personal power has switched off.
You know those days? When every little thing seems like a supreme effort. Especially work!! Just feel like getting into bed, switching on some Mozart and day dreaming. Knowing me, it's likely to happen. I can tell you with absolute certainty that besides about 4 urgent emails, work today is NOT going to happen.
Maybe I haven't got the damn discipline to be self-employed. It's just too easy to take "sick leave". Problem is: I can't work for a boss either. And I keep asking myself - is this laziness or is it a genuine BiPolar disability? Can I ever know? Where does the one end and the other start?
Should I be beating myself up and just buck up like the rest of the working world? Or should I be giving myself a break - shame, I've got BiPolar?
As a language teacher, I am effectively self-employed while working for the university: they set the hours that keep my routine together, and in the classroom I'm my own boss. Perhaps you should consider academia if it's at all possible.
ReplyDeleteI have those days where I do exactly what you describe- lay in bed dreaming myself into sleep and I do attribute it to the illness. during these times I have NO energy and if I dont rest I feel worse the depression deepens
ReplyDeleteI've done some of my best work in bed, but then I am a writer.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like the power failure and all its liberties made you hypomanic. Now you feel the fatigue.
The way you feel will change, slowly or quickly. It's this disease we have, these programmed-in dark nights of the soul. You're a survivor of this episode and worse.
I've been dreaming of staying in bed for the last six months. But I'm afraid that I might get depressed if I did so - regular work has it's benefits. It's only that I have started to mix things up at work to find new energy (personal relations etc.). Perhaps I should move to your pole, the South Pole. Got the summer there, eh?
ReplyDeleteJust thought I'd join the club - I'm also bipolar and tell you all about it on my blog:
ReplyDeletehttp://philipbrubaker.blogspot.com/
Yeah. There's a shameless plug for ya. Thank God (or whomever) for these blogs, eh?
I wonder some of the same things you do - where does bipolar end and pulling-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps begin? How much power do I really have over this? My advice is to keep fighting.
yeah, you let me know when you get the answer. i'm sure a lot of us would like to know
ReplyDelete