From Mrs M

Wow – it’s quite freaky to think that people from around the globe are discussing you, how much you love your husband and whether you’ll dump him with a week’s notice! Just thought I’d pop in (unedited by BPG) and give my own perspective…and just to prove it’s really me, I’ve added a short audio message.

Honestly, it’s not easy living with someone who has bipolar. But then again, it would not be easy living with someone who was dying from cancer or someone who stayed out partying every other night (been there, done that) and was sleeping with his secretary. It’s life. A disabled friend once said to me that golf would be a hellishly boring game if there were just greens – no bunkers or rough.

When you love someone for who they are, it makes it a lot easier. BPG is an incredible person, and I love him. Fullstop. No conditions.

Yesterday I had the privilege of listening to a talk by Nobel Peace Prize winner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He was speaking about religion and compared it to a knife. A knife lying on a table is morally neutral. One person may pick it up and use it to cut bread to feed a hungry person, while another may use it to stab that person. It’s a fact – BPG has bipolar, no escaping that. It’s the way you deal with it that counts.

I’d like to leave you with three seemingly simple, but incredibly powerful words, that if translated into action, making living with someone who has bipolar easier than living with a perfectly healthy asshole.

Understand. Accept. Communicate.

z0tl – sorry it didn’t work out for you. Lucky for me you and BPG are very different.

Thanks guys for all the support.
Mrs M

Overriding depression

I listened to this podcast on depression yesterday (http://intraspectus.com/learn/audio/ - the 11 july 2005 session - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED) and suddenly things came into a new focus. I might be BiPolar, but what I am suffering from right now, and have been for the past 5 years, is major depression. Nothing less, nothing more. OK so I have these little pink smileys that pop up on my posts now and then (and very occassionally a red smiley) but those are just ripples on the surface of the waves. The real stuff that counts - the underlying tides themselves - have been ebbing outwards for 5 years straight now.

In fact, BiPolar in my case is a bit of a misnomer. If I look back at the past 15 years I have probably suffered a cumulative total of about 2 weeks of full-blown, psychosis-level mania. And 10 years of depression.

That equates to:

• 66% of the time depressed
• 33% of the time normal (in which I built up my business and actually acheived any notion of worldly success)
• and 0.15% of the time manic.
  

Looking at the facts, this blog would be far better called "Depression Daily(ish)" by "Depressed Guy". The very term Bi-Polar puts a false spin on the whole thing. I mean, it's like this vast desert that doesn't see rain for 10 years, and then has 2 weeks of absolute deluge and you name the region a "dry/wet region". Totally fckn ridiculous.

And why, against this set of facts, does my medication regime consist of 33% of chemicals to ensure that I don't go psychotic??

And why, when I go see the psychiatrist, does she spend 50% of the time searching for signs of mania???

And why, if she thinks there are signs of mania it constitutes a medical emergency, whereas chronic depression just seems to be a fact of life?

And why, when I discuss weed with Mrs M, telling her that it may alieve depression, her major worry is that it might induce psychosis??? *

All these mights, mights, mights - when, actually, the established FACT is that I DO have major depression, no maybes about it!

Mania, unfortunately, has been been blown out of all proportion by popular culture. It makes for good movies and books, not like depression which is downright fckn boring. OK, so mania is when you might be at your most dangerous to other people - well I can tell you that I have never so much as lifted a finger against anyone whilst psychotic. If anything, I've gone on these messianic adventures preaching world peace and brotherly love.

But when it comes to which is the most destructive for BPG, it is hands-fckn-down depression. No question. That's the thing that's gonna bankrupt me. That's the thing that has any chance of killing me (hosepipe thru the car window). Ever heard anybody dying from mania???

In fact, the sickest joke of the lot is that if you ask your pDoc what the greatest collaterall damages of mania are, they will likely say "You will crash afterwards and go thru bad depression". HEY, MR PDOC - I'VE ALREADY GOT MOTHERSTICKIN' DEPRESSION!!!!!

I think I'm really onto something here. Will have to continue some time.

* - Weed is definitely OUT as far as I'm concerned, but I'm just pointing out the same skewed logic at work.

Dear Anonymous

Thank you for your encouraging comment.

Mrs M and I, believe it or not, are very happily married. I wasn't officially diagnosed before we got married but had been open with Mrs M about my previous hospitalisations and struggles with depression. As hard as it may be to believe, Mrs M and I took our "better or for worse vows" literally. So when the diagnosis arrived, Mrs M didn't abscond me to find a wealthier bread winner that could splash her body with bling.

Yeah, I am lucky. Fckn lucky. But maybe (as hard as it might be for you to fathom) Mrs M is lucky too. She believes in me. She knows I might have a few bad years, but she knows too that in the good years I'm capable of great things. Like building up the business that I sold 5 years ago which allowed us to travel the world and buy this stunning house we live in. (which, if we sold, would squelch all the debt in one shot and leave a fairly handsome pile thereafter). Like having another suitor sniff at my current business recently with a million buck aqcuisition in mind.

But please, in your own relationships steer well clear of BiPolars. They require extremely empathic and wide minds to be loved and understood. And allowed to lie on the couch with their dogs from time to time...

CURRENT MOOD: Pissed off

***

UPDATE:

Dear Anonymous

Thank you for your second comment. Sorry I got pissed off - I guess it is because I feel so damn guilty myself about not working like everyone else. Mrs M is a very, very special person and I appreciate every day how difficult it is for her.

And I think it absolutely sucks that people don't have a choice but to work 9-to-5. The world is screwed up. As the great philosopher Rousseau said: "Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains". If I was in charge, I'd try make it different.

Don't feel too bad though. Your pissing me off got me so hyped up that I went for a long run on the beach and am heading down to my office right now to catch up on some work. Maybe I need to get pissed off more often???

Career

"I'm thinking what you really need, BPG, is a day job that pays a salary"

Kodeureum's comment yesterday has been on my mind for a long, long time. Like at least the past 5 years. And I feel this constant guilt that I am not working like the vast majority of the world's adult population are. The guilt doesn't help though, it just makes the depression worse. So in an effort to defend myself, here are some reasons I'm not in somebody else's employ:

• Since the age of 21 I have always been either self-employed or working on a commission-only basis (which is pretty much self-employed). This has 2 big consequences: 1) I've always been in charge of my own working hours and therefore the idea of compulsory 9-to-5 stuff seems like a prison sentence. 2) I've always been in a situation where there is unlimited monthly earning potential on the upside, and a direct correlation between effort expended and financial reward. Therefore the idea of working for a set (and probably measly) amount, regardless of how much work you put in, seems ludicrous.
• The reason I can no longer work in a commission-only environment is because I can no longer live as a fake person. I was good at sales and marketing, but had to continually put this false persona on at all times, neccesitated by being in the conservative financial sector (the only area I am qualified in) where BiPolar dudes are just an absolute No-Go.
  
• Being BiPolar I often get days where the depression hits so bad that I can't get out of bed (this without working in a prison sentence job). In a fixed hour job I would fall foul of my employers within the first few months.
  
• I have zero passion for the financial world. (the only area I am qualified in). No, less than zero passion...a type of hate. Nothing that I am passionate about pays money. Philosophy is one passion that I tried to make a career out of, but down here in South Africa the only career opportunity for a philosophy graduate is to lecture other philosophy graduates. Being white, older than 30, and male, there is not a snowball's chance in hell that I would qualify for a lecturing post given our country's radical affirmative action policies.
  
• Having spent some time off the career conveyor-belt system, I can see how cheated the world's career workers are actually getting. Corporations are  expecting more and more of their employees, Chronic over-time is the norm , and basically , if you want to get anywhere, you're required to sell your soul to the Almighty Corporation. LIVE. CONSUME. BE SILENT. DIE. Once you've actually seen how the working population is unbeknowlingly being cheated out of life it's difficult to go along with it. And ignorance, unfortunately, is like virginity - once you've lost it, you can never get it back.

In all honesty, probably the biggest reason that I've not got a job in the past 5 years is that, after selling my business, I was in the fortunate position that I didn't have to. But that has finally ended - no more cash left.

Which means that if my web business doesn't start improving pretty quickly, Kodeureum will be right and I will need to get a job. Either that or sell the house. In reality, selling the house is a more likely outcome because deep down I am afraid that if i was trapped in a passionless prison sentence for the bulk of the rest of my life, just so that I could justify my  place on earth, I would  rather end up joining my ancestors.

Spoilt brat? Maybe. Person with a genuine disability?

Maybe.

Trucker Tom

Was planning to do an audio post today but it seems that the telephone number that you phone into is down - beeep, beeeep, beeep...

It's been an eventful week. Smoking the joint on Tuesday, the first joint in nearly 3 years. Getting a little stoned and writing a whole lot of stream-of-consciousness stuff here on BPD. Then....throwing the stash away, along with a packet of Peter Stuyversant extra-mild 20s (although there were only about 14 cigs left in the box when I threw it out).

And: from Wednesday onwards, the beginning of a very promising health kick. Long runs on the beach everyday. No weed. No cigarettes. No junk food. Lots of liquids.

Looking back now, the week was a fckn See-Saw.

Anyhow, today is an awesome Sunday down here in Cape Town, and aptly named too because the sun is burning down in all it's African glory. No clouds, no wind, just this drenching sunshine. Some smooth jazz wafting through the air. Lying in the sun listening to may latest favourite podcast - Trucker Tom. Its nothing profound, nothing side-slplitting, just the thinking aloud of a US truck driver as he makes his way along interstate highways at 2 am in the morning. At first you might find it boring, because this guy chews over his words, and often rechews, and rechews, but after a while the hum of the truck's engine in the background, making it's way through the night, gets really addictive. And Tom is nobody's fool. His logic sometimes seems to grind away slowly like the gears of his truck, but he's got a pretty wisened take on the world. You can get his podcast here.

He does about 40 minutes daily - not a problem for him cos' he always records while he is driving anyway - and it's kind of turned into a daylight soapie for BPG.

I'm getting more and more keen to produce a podcast. To run kind of alongside this blog. Podcasts just seem so much more intimate and individual when you're accompanied by the protagonists voice. There's a warmth that isn't there in letters flickering on the cmptr screen, and I'm thinking that this would go down really well in the BiPolar Community.

The Excluded Included Middle

I have made a major conceptual breakthrough with my ongoing philosophy of BiPolar.

Last month I posted about "Telling the Difference" which basically related to the eternal BiPolar Dilemma of how to know when things are your own fault and when things are your condition's fault.

The Dilemma: You have to make a personal choice about each action in your life:

It is pre-determined, governed by my chemical condition

OR

It is totally up to me, and controlled by my free will.

The Either/Or structure is one of the most fundamental building blocks of Western logic, something I learned in Philosophy 101. It is governed by the Excluded Middle - i.e there is no overlap between the two options it is either 100% of the one, or 100% of the other.

And maybe this is how I've been thinking about events in my BiPolar life up to now. Sitting puzzling about where the responsibility  and blame lies.  When you look at it that way there is always a DILEMMA - a forced split that cannot be bridged.

Well, I've finally seen that it's Bullshit. There is an overlap! Let's call it the Included Middle. In this view instead of a Y-junction, the responsible/ non-responsible issue lies on a spectrum.  So that there is ALWAYS a combination of the two. At one end of the spectrum things might be particularly tough for the BiPolar where his/her chemical make-up accounts for 90% of their behaviour and only 10 % of their determined effort. At the other end of the spectrum might be 90% free will, 10% pre-determined.

Viewing things through this paradigm has big ramifications.

1. You can NEVER completely absolve your responsibility for your actions. In the either/or paradigm, once you had decided that an action was totally pre-determined by your  pre-condition, you could just throw your hands in the air and yelp "It's not my fault - not one bit of it."
2. You can NEVER totally blame yourself for your actions. There will always be some latent  force at work which is beyond your control. So no, you never need to go through that excruciating guilt about not measuring up to the non-BP Muggles.
   

With this new paradigm there is ALWAYS a glimmer of hope. We can ALWAYS try our best, even if we don't always succeed. And when we don't succeed we needn't think ourselves as abject, miserable failiures.

I'm thinking that this new way of looking at things is much healthier. BiPolars need to be wary of extremes and EXcluded middles force EXtremes.

So far, so good

I know it's early days but, hey, you gotta start somewhere. I've acheived all my goals except getting cognitive therapy. I'm going to hold off on the therapy for the moment. Two reasons: 1) I don't really like my present psychologist anymore 2) To find a new one means going back to page one in terms of my background and, trust me, there are many, many chapters to get through until they'll be up to speed.

The best part so far has been running on the beach. I forgot the high that you get after cardio-vascular excercise - you know, the stuff that makes you puff and pant. Long beach walks are cool but thay don't get the endorphines buzzing like the puff and pant stuff. And if I'm not to smoke weed, I desperately need another form of high. The only natural high I can think of is cardio vascular excersise. I used to be addicted to it in my non-depressive state several years ago.

One person who has inspired me in all of this is Willbefine, a regular commentor on this blog. Whilst I was in my rants about rapid-cycling, Willbefine, a fellow BiPolar, is cycling alone on his bicyle 2000 miles through Ukraine. Kudos to him!

Whilst on the subject of daily goals I discovered this eggcellent site: www.JoesGoals.com It's a classic Web 2.0 site, presently in beta, and I think it's gonna be a daily visit for BPG for many years to come.

!! NEW START !!

NO MORE CIGARETTES
NO MORE WEED
NO MORE WEIGHT GAIN
NO MORE AVOIDANCE STRATEGIES
NO MORE SHIRKING WORK

START RUNNING ON BEACH EVERY DAY
START WATCHING WHAT I EAT
START MEDITATING EVERY DAY AGAIN
START DOING SIT-UPS EVERY DAY
START PUSHING MYSELF TO WORK WHEN I'M DOWN
START COGNITIVE THERAPY WITH A NEW THERAPIST

DISCIPLINE
DISCIPLINE
DISCIPLINE

GOD HELP ME

Joint

I've succumbed.

I'm sitting in my outside office, joint rolled, ready to smoke. It's 8h52am down here in Cape Town, plenty enough time to straighten up before Mrs M gets home. I'm not telling her because she would kill me.

I'll speak just now....

9:39am
Feeling really mellow. Like I'm in the middle of a really good meditation session. Straight after the joint (I only had 3 puffs) I went down to the beach. It was effortless. I felt my pleasurably aching shins from the climb up cape point on Sunday. The wind was howling so I pulled my jacket hood over my ears, and found a little hollow in the rock pools to rest my arse in. On the way back the wind was in my face and I leant into it letting the weight of my upperbody fall gently forwards.

Right now I've got Cat Stevens playing in the lounge. Haven't listened to him for ages. The Cd in the player was Spyra Gyro, which I played the other night for Mrs M's mothers birthday. Its exceptionally smooth. Smoother than Cat Stevens I'm thinking so I'm gonna take myself off down the passage and put some Spyra on. Or should I put that heavy bass dubb that Guy gave me last week...

I decided that the Cat Stevens was fine - just needed the volume amped a bit.

Sunshine keeps threatening to come out today. I wish it would. I used to be a cold weather person (Wet and cuddly) but a strange shift has overcome me the past few weeks. I'm loving sitting in the sunshine at every opportunity and can't wait for the vast abundance of summer African sunshine.

I failed to mention that I had a cigarette when I sat in the hollow in the rock pools. Didn't really enjoy it, but I need something. I've always needed something after a joint. Something to kind of take the edges off. Used to be alcohol. My fuck, I can't believe how I've given up alcohol. Nearly 2 years now. Not a drop. I maintain firmly that I was not an alcoholic, only in social situations and after weed.

Well I'm not gonna have a fckn drop right now. Probably head for another cigarette just now - but NO alcohol. Actually alcohol was the easiest to give up. Cigarettes second. It's weed that I'm going to struggle with the rest of my life...

10h15am
OK so I might be a little stoned. But I'm thinking that what I am writing right here is very coherent. If not more coherent than the usual crap. Certainly more in the "here and now" than the usual head-in-the-clouds shit. Fckn ironic huh??

Just had an awesome shower, something that, with the latest bout of depression, hasn't happened every day. Hot stinging jets of water drumming my back.

And that's where it came to me:
BiPolar Guy is a Master of Self Deception. Which is not a good thing.
Like, right now I haven't answered my work emails for 4 days. Usually, no matter how pretty shitty the days are, I ALWAYS stay on top of my email.

Truth be told, since yesterday midday I haven't even checked my mail. I'm too shit scared. Some fucker (probably from Friday) is soon gonna send a rude-and-nasty through about the lack of efficiency and response. So it's started this downward spiral. Don't check your email in case there's nasty news -> more chance of nasty news -> Don't check your email in case there's nasty news -> more chance of nasty news -> etc. etc. Classic BPG Self sabotage.

...Like last week was the all time low in terms of working hours put in. Like this week is heading to break that record. Like my credit card balance is setting new records on the upside.

Like: i'M IGNORING ALL OF THIS.

Ok, so the joint opened the gates and smashed any form of Writer's Block right out of the park (as you, just maybe, might have noticed). But what about the WORKER'S BLOCK???

Somethings gotta give. And I guess the first thing that already gave was my resolve not to smoke weed again. Oh well, I'm off for a cigarette right now...speak a little later...

1o:44am
Am I really stoned? Maybe this is all just melodrama from 2 year's fantasizing and build-up about my next joint (I always knew there was going to be another one). I mean, shit, it was only 3 little puffs. Quality puffs for sure, I took our gardener Jackson into his township this morning and procured some of the Best. Pure African ganga from the hills of the Wild Coast. Not like the shit you get on the street.

But how do you know if you're stoned or not? At what point are you and at what point not?? Or am I just missing the point entirely.

Stoned or not, this morning's little adventure has definitly kick started something. Exactly what I wanted it to do. And the thing that got kickstarted, whatever it was, had definitely spluttered to a halt. Quite a long time ago methinks.

I'm really having fun here. Always dreamt about doing a post when I was stoned/semi-stoned/thinking-I'm-stoned. It's like my 2 therapies all in one. Yeah the blog has always been about therapy. And weed - yip that's a therapy too. I mean I don't use it to chill back into the couch and pig out on burgers and pornos. Nah, I use it to think. To try see things from a different perspective. Take stock of where I'm at. Shit I was even pacing up and down the verhanda just now, cigartette shuttling between hand and mouth. I've always been a pacer. I enjoy pacing, it makes things in your head clearer. And I positively cannot talk on the phone without walking around. Miss L seems to have inherited it from me. Ah Miss L and telephone bills...

But I suppose if there is any real critical perspective to be got right now it is:

After 5 cigarettes today - am I once again a cigarette smoker??
Will I have to go through the whole gaddam nicorette patch route again?

MORE IMPORTANTLY:

Am I now a weed smoker again? The weed is tucked away in a jar as we speak but there's sure damn enough for another 20 joints in there. Where is this all going to end up???

Cape Point

Headed down to Cape Point today (about 50 kms South of where we stay) and got out into some fresh air. The actual end of the peninsula (middle picture below) is close to where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet. Here some pics from the day:








The mood has definitley lifted, but the real acid test comes tomorrow. Motherstickin' Monday.

Doldrums

This down is a baddie. I haven't really escaped from it all week. Everything has ground to a halt. My excercise regime, my meditation, and, most drastically, my work. If I don't put a few hours in tomorrow, I will be setting a new all time low record for weekly hours worked. Not good!

Finished a book yesterday: "Future:Tense", and that gave a brief respite. Excellent book by the way. If you want to know exactly what is going on in international politics right now, and the likely alternatives for the next 10 years, then this book offers a highly lucid and logical perspective.

But so fckn what? What does it matter what's going on in the global balance of power, when you can hardly get out of bed?

Where to from here? Try find some route to claw my way out? Or just ride with it, let nature take it's course?

???

Guy

My old friend Guy came out for lunch On Sunday. I met Guy in Ward 24 when I was hospitalised the first time. He was in a cubicle just up the way.

For those of you that have read my book, Guy was the artist that drew the picture of the lightening striking the pyramid just before I had shock treatment. He is the only person from that ward I have ever seen since.

Guy is the most talented artist I know. He is so in tune with the creative forces that, in my opinion, he is a mystic. And he is 100% true to his talent. He has struggled to earn a living for the past 20 years, but he has never left his art. If his art doesn't sell, he would rather live in a gutter than go get some kind of corporate job.

And, like all the great artisits before him, Guy struggles with substance abuse. I first saw him last year (after a 20 year Gap) when I hit my mid-year mania. I suddenly got this urge to find him, so I did a search on the internet and, hey presto, he was doing an art exhibition in Cape Town. Unbeknown to me, he lives in Cape Town, a big stroke of luck because we met in Pretoria.

I made contact and we got together. At that time Guy had just come out of a bad drug patch and was totally clean. I always get very charged up when I see Guy. That first breakdown was chronic psychosis, I mean CHRONIC, and it lasted 3 months. Guy was there from beginning to end. But, more than that, Guy saw the things that I saw.


But on Sunday when I collected him he had been out the whole of Saturday night and stunk of Whisky. Once at our house he proceeded to climb into a mid-morning bottle of wine, and by the time he had finished several whiskies later, he passed out in his chair. I had to drive him home.

Not that I can be judgmental or anything. If I had a dollar for every time I had passed out from inebriation, I'd be a little less stressed about my debt. But it definitlely left me with a kind of a shitty feeling. Memories flooded back from my youth. All my friends were "Guys". And so was I. And I'm thinking that I had really shit foundations to build my adulthood upon.



(Mt Polar - I have smoked 4 cigarettes in the past week, but thankfully have not got passed the cough/splutter/nausea barrier yet, so threw my packet over the fence yesterday lunchtime. Hopefully never to return. )

Rut

When will I face it? I've been rotting in this comfort-zone rut for nearly 5 years now. Nothing left but eat and sleep. How far from here to the gutter??

Denying even the denial.



I've stuffed my face, and I'm going to sleep. wake me up when it's all over...

Labels: The fallibility

So I looked into the definition of cyclothymia, and found that, yes, it is a category for BiPolars who cycle more rapidly than the traditional "Rapid-cycling" definitions. Only problem is that BiPolar Type One and Cyclothymia don't seem to overlap. And I am most definitely BiPolar Type One. Type One is probably the hardest to misdiagnose because whilst moods are often subjective, landing up in hospital convinced that you are The Chosen One, is an indisputable fact.

So I'm still left in the same confusion. And this takes me into my pet subject - philosophy. The inability of man-made concepts and words to correctly capture reality has been the scoff of many of the greatest philsophers. The belief that man's concepts are sufficient is known as the "cookie-cutter" theory of reality, where (for example) all the mental states in the world exist as a kind of slab of dough, and the psychiatrists come along, identify exactly which portion is BiPolar, and zap the cookie cutter thereupon.

Nietzsche put it thus - critisizing the Platonists of building their knowledge "by means of the pale, cool, gray, conceptual nets which they threw over the colourful confusion of sense".

In short: Cookie Cutters don't work.. There will always be some stuff included which shouldn't, and some stuff excluded which shouldn't. There aren't any neat borders. This is especially so when it comes to the human mind - the most complex known piece of (grey) matter in the universe. Complexity like this can never be capture by the "cool, gray, conceptual nets" of psychiatry. Human potential is infinite - the very nature of "ring-fencing" stuff is making it defined - finite. And, to quote BPG's originally crafted oxymoron:

Infinity,
By definiton,
Cannot be defined.

For all those who are lost by now: What I'm trying to say is what KrazyKitty commented on my post the other day: "The definition of rapid-cycle" is out dated. So is the definition of "manic episode"
Along with all other definitions.

Cycles within cycles.

I'm on a roll here, so I may as well continue. Sorry if your feet are getting tired on the pedals.

Way back when I was involved in the stock market for a living I read a piece written by a very wise old investor. He compared the stock market to the sea, always moving, always shifting. And he identified 3 levels of movement:

1. The ripples on the surface of the water. This represented the daily moves of the stock market, the stuff day traders are obssessed with.
   
2. On a deeper level are the waves of the sea. This equates the little rallys and dips in the stock market, usually occurring over weeks or months. Most performance-driven fund managers are stuck in this paradigm.
3. Underneath the ripples and the waves are the tides. These are the real big movements, the Bull and Bear markets, and usually take years.

The reason I'm telling you this, is that the stockmarket does not only have similarities with the sea. It has huge similarities with BiPolar. Way back just after the birth of this blog I wrote a post titled The Stock Market is Manic And it most definitley is BiPolar. Hey, they even call the downs "depressions" and the ups "Irrational exuberance".

"So what's your point BPG???" My point is that our BiPolar moods can also be comapred to the 3 levels of the sea. This whole conversation about Rapid Cycling has made me see this. It dawned upon me, that trying to identify my mood on a daily basis, is maybe like being a day trader in the stock market. In this frame of mind you lose perspective on the Big Picture. At best you are gambling and you never call the market accurately by identifying the really big movements - the incoming tide and the outgoing tide. It's like you're standing so damn close to the big picture that your nose is touching it and, yes, all you can see are the ripples of the paint on the canvas.

Maybe it's counterproductive to "chart" your moods on a daily basis. Maybe that way you're doomed to be a rapid rapid-cyclist forever. Perhaps it would be better to review every month and give that a mood rating "Overall". Or even every year. Try it - look back on the last 15 years of your life and mark off which ones were good happiness-wise and which not. If you're anything like me, you'll see these long-wave patterns appearing 2 or 3 years of good, 3 or 4 of bad. Rapid Cyclist? Not a fck! You were just so engrossed in the daily ripples that you didn't see the wood from the forest.

To add confusion to this whole debate, my old friend Mage threw in another BiPolar definition yesterday: cyclothymia. Yeah that really throws a spanner in the rapid cycle escalator. I'll have to ponder that one overnight and continue with this Tour de Flumoxed
tomorrow.

Rapid Rapid-Cycling 2

I've been doing some more thinking about rapid-cycling and can see that I made an error in my last post. I said that, according to the official definitions of rapid-cycling, I usually qualify as a rapid cyclist in the first 3 months of the year. Incorrect.

Sure I have more than 4 episodes of bad depression and/or mania a year, but they DO NOT last for at least 2 weeks each (1 week for mania). To qualify I would need 7 "YeeHaa"s in a row , or 14 "Got-a-Gun"s in a row. The last time I had one of these was in June last year when I probably had 10 "YeeHaa"s in a row, but that was pre-BiPolar Daily. Sure I've had other YeeHaas and other Got-a-Guns, but never more than 2 in a row.

Conclusion: I am NOT a rapid-cyclist. I seem, in fact, to cycle TOO rapidly to meet the rapid-cyclist definition. That's pretty weird, because when you think of a BiPolar sufferer without Rapid-Cycling you tend to think of someone who has these LOOONG patches of depression or mania, so long in fact that they never manage 4 seperate sessions in a year. But no, a whole nother type of BiPOlar misses the boat too - the dudes who cycle so damn rapidly that each episode is not considered full-blown. Maybe they should start a new category for us dudes like "Daily Cyclists" or "weekly cyclists". Or "chronic rapid-cyclists".

Maybe I'm lucky the extremes only last days and not weeks. Imagine 14 Day's of "Got-a-Gun". I reckon he'd end up "Found-a-Gun".

Rapid Rapid-Cycling

Just how rapid does rapid cycling get? The official criteria to qualify as a rapid cyclists are:

• You must experience 4 or more distinct mood episodes in a year*
• Your mania must last at least one week; depression two weeks*

(*various sources)

Well shit, if that's the case then I usually qualify in the first quarter of the year.

As for Sunday - I was like a bloody YoYo. YeeHaaa in the morning,  Pretty Shitty by lunch.  etc. etc.

In retrospect though, I gotta admit that the YeeHaa was only  very temporary.  I've been hanging to  screech out a YeeHaaa on audio-blogger for some time now, so excuse me if I seized the opportunity a little prematurely.

Today? Probably...

Kalk Bay

Mrs M and I snatched some valuable "us time" yesterday and headed to Kalk Bay for lunch. Kalk Bay has got to rate as one of my fav places. Cosmpolitan sidewalks packed with curio shops and little restuartants. The little fishing harbour bustling with fishermen and lobster trawlers. Across the bay the blue Mountains of the Overberg. Above it all, the green mountainside (OK so it's not all captured in the photos, but go there and you'll see).

The puppy in question

Actually Scallywag (featured on left), the star of yesterday's post, is no longer a puppy. She's about 3 now in dog years which would make her about 20ish in Human Been Counter Yrs. The other person in the picture, lying listening to Shpongle (the latest electronica discovery) is not a puppy either. But BPG has still got plenty Yap in him...

The importance of puppy training

So we had this big black dog called Socrates, a border-colly cross. He needed a lot of excercise and I took him walking on the beach every other day. After 18 months we got another dog, a little girl Jack Russell: Scallywag.

Scallywag should've gone to puppy training but we were too lazy. So Scallywag became a very naughty girl and would snap at people on the beach. So the dog walks on the beach were cut down to about once a week. This affected Socrates who needed plenty excersise, so he began putting on weight. We had to cut his portions of food down which left him continually hungry. His hunger drove him to start foraging in the garbage when we were out.

One day BPG got back home and found the garbage all over the floor. He stooped down to clean it up, and slipped on the wet floor, cracked his head, and died of brain injuries on the way to the hospital.

Puppy training is important.