Struggling

It's that Idea Flow Rate thing. Wayyy too many ideas, wayyy too fast. Wish it was like a tap that I could just adjust and close a little. Especially at 3 am in the morning when I'm trying to sleep (very little sleep last night...) The problem is that there's always the danger you'll shut the tap too much and then you'll just be left with the drip........drip.......drip.... of chronic depression.

Or maybe it's like one of those showers that you can never get the balance between hot and cold right. A milimeter clockwise and it's too hot. Milimeter anti-clockwise and it's too cold. BiPolar shower for sure.

Or maybe its just like trying to drive a car out of this field of mud I've been in the 5 past years. The minute I open the throttle, the wheels just start spinning. Getting nowhere.

Fast.

LATER...
Or maybe it's like this vast dam, and the anti-psychotics I was on for 15 years (and weaned myself off this year) were the Dam wall. And now the flood gates are open. Damn.

Mensa

Yes, OK, so I'm a member of MENSA (the trumpet on the right should say it all).

Truth be told, I've never, ever (not once) been to any MENSA gathering in 15 years. Back then, my girlfriend at the time dared me to do it. I only renew my membership every year in the deluded belief that I can tout my membership as some kind of confirmation that I am hot property.

And what about emotional intelligence (EQ) anyway? The social scientists are all clamouring that EQ is a better measure than IQ for predictive success. What is a BiPolar sufferer's EQ likely to be??? Moronic be default. Surely.

The reason I wrote this post in the first place was that I visited one of my favourite websites yesterday, www.uncyclopedia.org, and got this entry for MENSA.

NOTE TO FELLOW BLOGGERS
As I said a few posts back - I'm having problems posting comments on other blogs. Keep getting an error message saying "Our engineers are working on it." This has been going on for 2 weeks.
I think I might have worked out what the problem is: I seem to be able to post to blogs set up on the new beta:blogger, whereas I can't on the older blogs (probably because I am now on the beta platform myself). Anybody else had this issue?

BiPolar? You're in good company!

Other dudes that belong to the BiPolar Club:

• Hans Christian Andersen,
• Ludwig van Beethoven
• Frank Bruno
• Lord Byron,
• Winston Churchill
• Kurt Cobain
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Charles Dickens
• Richard Dreyfuss
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald
• William Faulkner
• Alexander Hamilton
• Ernest Hemingway
• Hermann Hesse
• Jimi Hendrix
• John Keats
• Spike Milligan
• Marilyn Monroe
• Jim Morrison
• Isaac Newton
• Florence Nightingale
• Ozzy Osbourne
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Robert Schumann,
• Robert Louis Stevenson,
• Mark Twain
• Jean Claude Van Damme
• Vincent Van Gogh
• Virginia Woolf

For the full list (yes, there are even more) see this Wikipedia entry

I rest my case.

spin doctor

The answer to life is...

a moving target*



*bought this new book yesterday on HTML and I've been playing around. Cool huh?

At last...... HONESTY!!!

We've crossed a very important line. In this article that was piped to my desktop this morning via Google News top 5 headlines, they finally, finally, finally.......

....referred to IRAQ's CIVIL WAR. (see first sentence).

Not "iraq is on the brink of civil war", "iraq could be heading to civil war" and other pussy-footing BullPoo. THE CIVIL WAR IN IRAQ. Period.

How did this shift happen? Was it like:

10 321 dead = "heading for civil war"
10 322 dead = "civil war" ???

Anyway, Hooray for the journalist who finally called a spade a fckn mother-sticking spade.

Now all they need to do is change "The 30 year Middle East Peace Process" to "The 30 year Middle East War Process" and we can start wiping the poo from our eyes.

The urge to splurge

Thanks for the comments guys. I've been visiting your blogs too, but for some dang reason every time I try post a comment I get: "Page Error - Our engineers are working on the problem". This has been going on for a week already. Already.

It is not just my TO DO list that has taken a hammering the past week - it's my WISH LIST too. It's that time of year when the Christmas catalogues are piling up in the mail box every day (yes, we still have good ol' wooden mailboxes screwed to the outside fence down here, where mail arrives on paper, wrapped in little parcels of more paper with colorful stickers on the top right corner).

This year the manufacturers have really got it right. Spot fckn On!. They must have read my mind, scanned my dreams, peered into my very future. Toys! Toys! Toys! Gadgets, Hi-Tech stuff, precision stuff, cool stuff, speed-churning stuff, slick stuff, wicked stuff.....

.... HAVE-TO-FCKN-HAVE STUFF

I went to do the gorcey shop at our local mall yesterday, and man, must I have looked a sorry site. My tongue was hanging on the floor, drool running down my jaws. I was a man possessed. Everything had my name on it. Everything was The One Essential piece missing from my life right now. Holy Grails statued in every window.

I was just lucky I came away with only a 300 buck dent in my wallet. But there's another couple thousand bucks that's already been penned in over the next few weeks.

huh...did, somebody mention overdraft? Overdraft? What overdraft?
I'm wearing these new specs that block out the bad stuff

It's hypomania - face it!

They say that depression sneaks up on you. Well hypomania does too. You kinda think that everyone's cruising along normally, when in actual fact you're zipping along in mania land.

That's me right now. Have been for the past 2 weeks. The signs were there all along:

• Insomnia night in and night out
• Zillions of new ideas. And no way of switching them off (which largely explains the insomnia)
• A sense of urgency about everything and MAJOR stress that there aren't enough hours in the day
• Difficulty focusing on one thing at a time; flitting all over the place
• Getting impatient and snappy with Miss L & Mrs M. (and I blamed it on the lack of sleep)
• Total Neb addiction - can't be away from the cmptr for more than 30 minutes at a time
  
• Plenty of energy. Beach walks every day. Record-breaking hours of work
• Difficulty meditating
  

So how am I gonna deal with it? I'm much more experienced with dealing with depression, the place I spend 98% of my life. The problem with the hypo is that there are good parts and bad parts. The energy and work hours are pure mana. I don't want to can't afford to throw them out with the bathwater.

Some ideas:

• Go watch a movie this weekend - at a movie house. (DVDs just don't do the trick) This will force me to switch off for a while. And get me away from the cmptr.
  
• Don't lose sight of the Big Picture, all these things on the TO DO list have only just got there - they are NOT that urgent
• Work even more at the meditation. Maybe increase the sessions.
• Eat a giant meal 2nite, late in the evening just before I sleep. Hopefully that will help me sleep (it has always been my sure-fire insomnia cure in the past)
• Be aware throughout the day that I'm skirting mania at the mo. Force myself to focus on one thing at a time and not get distracted.
• Cut down the coffee and tea intake
• Slow down
• Slow down
• Slow down
  

Any more ideas?

The Johari Window (Part 3)

Read first:
Part 1
Part 2
(otherwise you won't know what the fck I'm on about)

Funny z0tl should mention in yesterday's comments that the J-adjectives could be too flattering. Fear not, for every need has been catered for. Some other wise sage also recognised that the Johari Adjectives might be too positive to describe all individuals and came up with the Nohari Adjectives* :

incompetent
intolerant
inflexible
timid
cowardly
violent
aloof
glum
stupid
simple
insecure
irresponsible
vulgar
lethargic
withdrawn
hostile
selfish
unhappy
unhelpful
cynical
needy
unimaginative
inane
brash
cruel
ignorant
irrational
distant
childish
boastful
blasé
imperceptive
chaotic
impatient
weak
embarrassed
loud
vacuous
panicky
unethical
insensitive
self-satisfied
passive
smug
rash
dispassionate
overdramatic
dull
predictable
callous
inattentive
unreliable
cold
foolish
humourless

Same process as with the Johari adjectives, except I'm thinking that with this one, your "group" of contributors would need to put forward their chosen adjectives anonymously. Come to think of it, anonymous would probably work better for the J-adjectives too. But then you would need quite a few people, as the anonymous route would have been a bit of a non-starter with just me & Mrs M.

Choosing the 6 Noharis to describe myself highlights the BiPolar schism.
When depressed (anybody remember "Got-a-Gun?") I would go with:

glum
lethargic
cynical
selfish
withdrawn
dispassionate

But on a "YeeHaa!" day it would be:

irrational
boastful
impatient
rash
overdramatic
selfish

Anyhow, I'll get Mrs M to choose her 6 Nohari's for me, and dutifully report back on what I'm hiding behind the Facade.

(Hey, I just noticed, "selfish" made it onto both lists!! At last - my constant, unchanging self).

*this is a true story, not a BPG invention.

The Johari Window (Part 2)

Read Part 1 first

Did some more research on the J-window, and found that it's not just an intellectual theory, but that there is a practical active way of applying it. What you do is get a few people that know you well. Give each one a list of the following 55 "Johari Adjectives" (including yourself):

• able
• accepting
• adaptable
• bold
• brave
• calm
• caring
• cheerful
• clever
• complex
• confident

• dependable
• dignified
• energetic
• extroverted
• friendly
• giving
• happy
• helpful
• idealistic
• independent
• ingenious

• intelligent
• introverted
• kind
• knowledgeable
• logical
• loving
• mature
• modest
• nervous
• observant
• organised

• patient
• powerful
• proud
• quiet
• reflective
• relaxed
• religious
• responsive
• searching
• self-assertive
• self-conscious

• sensible
• sentimental
• shy
• silly
• spontaneous
• sympathetic
• tense
• trustworthy
• warm
• wise
• witty

Then each person chooses 6 of the above adjectives that they think describe you best. You choose the 6 that you think describe you the best yourself. Once done, collate the results.

Adjectives that you chose but nobody else did go in the "Facade" box. Adjectives that others chose and you didn't go in the "Blind Spot" box. Adjectives that you chose and others chose goes in the "Open Arena".

As to the unknown, you may as well take 6 darts and throw them at the list.

So Mrs M did mine, and I did hers (kinky huh?). This is how BPG came up:

Disciple of...

Materialism
Agnosticism
Pythagoreanism
Hedonism
Taoism
PostModernism
Idealism
NeoPlatonism
Marxism
Gnosticism
Buddhism
Existentialism

Disciple of Discipline
Yeah.

Idea flow rate

Last week I was skirting hypomania. Plenty work got done. Plenty energy. Struggled to sleep. And: PLENTY IDEAS.

But sitting here, Monday morning, wading through my TO DO list, I'm starting to think that the surge of ideas was counter-productive. Don't get me wrong, most of the best ideas I've ever had (shit maybe even all of them) have been produced in these super-charged idea surges. The problem is that it's impossible to actually keep up with implementing them all. I've got no doubt that if I did, I would have already made one of those billion $ sales to Google. But instead I sit here with an exploding and top-heavy TO DO list, and the pressure just builds and builds until it gets too much and drains all the energy out of me just looking at it. Kind of where I am right now.

It's especially a problem when you're working for yourself. In your own business there is infinite potential things to do. Your work isn't cut out for you by some HR departments specs. There's always something more you can do.

Thankfully I'm learning to deal a bit better with this high idea flow rate. Mostly by accident. First: my dictaphone broke down and I never replaced it. The dictaphone days were the worst - being scared to lose these brillaint ideas I used to babble them all into the dictaphone. Especially whilst I was driving. Then, next morning I'd dutifully transcribe them into my TO DO list or whatever other list they fell in.

But now I'm thinking, so fckn what if I forget the ideas. If they resurface again then I'll reconsider them. If not, they probably weren't that important or practical to start with. And, trust me, if something is important or critical it will always resurface. About 4 months ago I learnt this little secret first-hand. I was fiddling around deleting all my "Done" TO DO list items when I accidentally deleted the whole dang list! All 367 items. I kid you not.

My first reaction: CRISIS PANIC. I went into a flat spin. But by the next day I started feeling this huge weight off my shoulders. Liberated. Kind of like starting with a clean slate. How many of my ideas made it back to the TO DO list out of neccessity, and how many dissappeared into the wild blue ether, never to reappear, I will never know. But you know what? It doesn't fckn matter.

Happy Monday, people.

sunday

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

- Max Ehrmann, 1952

***

You've probably seen this piece before. When my gran died many moons ago, she did not have much. But she left me a framed copy of the Desiderata. I was in the midst of my first psychosis at the times. Had already been chronically (and continually) psychotic for 1 month, and would be the same for another 2.

It's one of those pieces you bump into every 5 or 6 years in your life. And every time I do, I find myself thinking, Man, this is spot on for the times we're living in.

And so it was this week.

Timeless.

The Johari Window

The Johari Window is a model of how personality interacts with the world. It has 4 quadrants definied by what parts of yourself are know by yourself, and what by others.

I first came across this diagram way back last millenium, but every time I try analyse it, it intrigues me more and more.

But it has something very interesting to say about WillbeFine's comment the other day:

"Why do we have secrets?"

We all have secrets, every one of us. I reckon we're meant to. And the secret thoughts we have are not always good or honest thoughts. The man (married or un) who has seen a beautiful woman at some point and not imagined how she would look with her legs wide open on his bed , is an outright liar. And versa vice for women.

What's particularly interesting about the J-Window, is that we all actually have 2 kinds of secrets (things unknown to others). Those that we do know (facade), and those that we don't (unknown). Yeah, there are loadsa things about yourself that you don't know (and nor does anybody else.)

To be sure, we do not all have the same amount of secrets, and our 4 Aspects of Self are not as perfectly equal as the first diagram would suggest. Some person, for eggsample, might look more like this one on the left. He/She/It is pretty much a closed book. Hides most of itself from others and has very little apprehension of how others see it. In fact, I would contend that there is no static J-Window "self" at all, we probably have different J-Window ratios for every different relationship we're in.

And they change with time. Most theorists reckon that for a healthy personality we need to expand A, bigger and bigger into all the other partly (or wholly) secret regions. Kind of like this on diagram on the right shows:

What I find really interesting is: Where does this blog fit? BPD I mean.Does it fit in A (Open Arena) - Known by me and YOU?

Does some of it fit in B (Facade) - things I keep from you? Ah, ha...I'm not telling.

And does some of it fit in C (Blindspots) - things you can see from my blog about me that I can't see myself? Blindspots? Stupid tendencies? Bad habits?

Pray tell...


Maybe we should make some type of a trade. You give me a bit of Block C (Show. Me. the. BLINDSPOTS) and I'll give you a bit of Block B (Show you the HOTSPOTS).

Post removal

Mrs M is right. If Miss L was ever to see her photo splattered on the web along with her personal life story (as per this original post) her trust for me would be shattered.

So it's gone.
Into the trash can.

But if you want to know how beautiful she is (yes, I'm a proud, proud dad), just read the comments

Blog Privacy

Thanks for all your support guys. Always goes a long way.

As at right now, early monday morning, things are looking a whole lot better. Miss L is doing well. Whether she will ever cut again...I don't know. I don't think she does either. We all just hope for the best.

In Saturdays comments:

eric d said...

"does your daughter read this blog?
i'm just wondering. if she knows you talk about things, even though we don't really know you at all, how does she feel about that?
blogging is such an odd allowed invasion..."

Yeah, it's a good point. And I would be lying if I said I just went ahead, all gung-ho like, when I posted about Miss L's cutting. What we tell in our blogs and what we don't is a highly tricky and sensitive topic.

To answer the Eric's question though - No, L does not read this blog. Let me clarify that - she does not read this blog "to my knowledge". She doesn't really even know about it, but we all share the same upstairs computer (my own cmptr is in my outside office) and, as Mrs M points out, I've often left my blog open on the screen.

When people in your everyday life start reading your (private?) blog it opens up scary scenarios. In the beginning Mrs M read mine every day. Then last year we had a major row over some comments that were left, and she vowed never to read it again. But in August a big problem arose. I had smoked a joint that day and documented it here. Because of my history of psychosis, Mrs M, understandably, is violently oppossed to any BPG weed smoking activities.

I had already climbed into bed that particular night when a visibly distraught Mrs M came into the room from the communal cmptr room and said, in a shaky voice: "I don't know exactly how to tell you this, but i know what you did today." Turned out she'd been following my blog for the whole year. Luckily it wasn't a big issue, our misdemeanours kinda cancelling each other out: my promise not to smoke weed; her promise not to read BiPolar Daily.

It could have turned out worse though. Take the case of a blog I follow daily: Peas on Toast . This is South Africa's second most popular blog, the daily life of a young party-animal woman living in Johannesburg. Part of the attraction of this blog is that Peas calls a pussy a pussy, and a cock a cock. No beating around the pubic bush. Seriously, she never holds back, and whilst she was single the past few months we heard all about her sexual fantasies, which guys she thought were hot the night before, and how often she used her vibrator. And she promised us all, her loyal readers, that next time she had a shag, we'd all be first to know about it in detail. Problem is: Peas now has a new boyfriend. AND HE READS HER BLOG. As do most of her ex-boyfriends and current girlfriends ever since she won some South African blog award earlier this year. Not sure if her boss is a reader - probably not based on some of her musings.

But her hands are now tied. How the fck can you write about your previous night's fck when the fcker is reading it too??? And her readers are now starting to put pressure on her: "So Peas, did you shag or not last night?" "Hey Peas, what's he like in bed???"

I'd hate to be in her position right now (in the bedroom, or out :) . Fortunately her writing style is so unique and brilliant that I think most of her readers will hang on, but I still think she's wishing she had remained completely anonymous.

Yeah, I'm going to post more on this topic. As a higher and higher percentage of the world become bloggers (100 000 a day!!), protocols and etiquette around these new personal boundary issues are gonna go mainstream pretty quick.

Blood

She was curled up in her bed, I standing in the bedroom doorway. Only her face showed above the duvet. And her one arm looked deeper than under the duvet than the other...like she was hiding something. Her cellphone, I thought, after we'd confiscated it. "What's in your hand, L?"

A hesitation. Then she pulls her arm out from under the covers, a pair of open scissors in them. Tears start swelling in her eyes. And mine. NO, NO, NO I'm screaming to myself. This CAN'T be happening. Not THIS. THIS belongs to the recurring nightmares I've been having the last 3 weeks. And the ugly premonition that's played through my mind a zillion times in the last few months.

She throws the duvet right off her now, and the fresh red all over her other arm stikes my whole being, knocking a neighbourhood-range howl out of my lungs.

***

But she's OK. It was just surface cuts. We're over the worst. A calm is starting to settle on the house now. And, I honestly believe that the emotional outpouring from last night, and the heartwrenching talks the 3 of us had this morning, have finally penetrated.

As to her psychologist: I phoned yesterday morning, just after writing yesterday's post, about 8 hours before the event, telling her that serious trouble was brewing... well the psychologist was out of town. "Phone her psychiatrist" she said.

So I phoned the psychiatrist, left a message on her emergency number. "Miss L's Dad here, we ARE having an emergency, please phone me urgently."

Only after the blood had been wiped off (8 hours later) did Mrs M finally make contact with the psychiatrist. In fairness to her, she was caring and very re-assuring when we did get her. But we already knew that, in the final analysis, we were on our OWN. Which she confirmed, accuractely, I guess that our only 2 options for Miss L were:

1. Admission into a clinic
2. Fight through it as a family unit.

She, highly recommended option 2. And it's no surprise. Psychiatric wards in South Africa are not exactly first world, and it would have destroyed Miss L to go there. "Make her know that she is in a very safe and secure environment."

So we fought it together, as a family.

And so far we're winning.

Crisis

A bit of a crisis, emotional and otherwise, has struck down from hell today. Which makes the little social get2gether dilemma look like a pimple on an elephant's arse. One of those giant African elephants, not their smaller Indian cousins.

Seriously - the shite has hit the fan. I can't even go into it all here. There is just too much to unpack. So far I'm standing up to the pressure quite well. I tend to manage this in the eye of the storm. Suddenly find this huge reservoir of inner strength to draw upon. Its later next week that it will hit me.

As an extra precaution I've popped a few anti-psychotics this morning. Just to be extra vigilant. When things go this awry it's sometimes difficult not to think that somebody has put you under an evil curse.

Will keep you posted.

To drink or not to

I stopped drinking alcohol about 2 years ago. Not that I was an alcoholic, more that hangovers reacted really badly with my depression. So, being an all or nothing kinda Guy, I decided to ditch drinking altogether.

It hasn't been hard. Like I said, I wasn't alcohol dependent. I used it mainly to take the edge off in large social gatherings. But there haven't been lots of large social gatherings in my life the past year. Up until this coming Saturday.

It's my cousin's 40th and she's having a big get-2-gether. Her family is the acheiver side of the family, her 4 brothers are all highly successful businessmen and all 4 of them have provincial colours for sport - the one actually has national colours for South Africa. And they're a pretty snooty judgmental bunch. So you don't feel so cool when you creep in there holding up the BiPolar side of the family. Like MENTAL not judgeMENTAL.

Normally there wouldn't be a scrap of doubt - Don't Go. But this time I'm thinking I have to, for Miss L's sake. She hasn't even met that side of the family, and I think its valuable that she does. Even if just to see that our greater family is not all alternate in the head.

But as Saturday draws nearer, visions of quaking under the table are becomming more vivid. An easy solution would be to have a few drinks before going. Kind of like a short term tranquilizer. Truth be told, my pDoc actually gave me a supply of Beta-blockers (Inderal) for just such occassions, but I've tried them and they do absolutely nothing for me.

There's Pros and Cons both ways. If I don't do the drink I might well end up not going. It certainly wouldn't be the first time I've pulled a "no show" for a social function. And I'm thinking that would really be a let down for Miss L.

he Con of drinking is that I would have caved in to my fear, broken a 2 year old abstinence and paved the way for a few more drinks every time there's a social occassion.

But as usual, the Cancerian in me is scuttling from side to side in indecision, pincers groping the air for answers. Any ideas??

phew, I'm tired

Gone on a real workathon the last 48 hours. Been workin' me butt off.

It all started on Monday night when I was thinking about the end of the year coming up, and what the resolutions for next year are likely to be. It didn't take too long to work out that the most important thing for me to focus on right now is work.

So I got to thinking - I've been aiming at all these daily goals, like:

• meditate
• jog
• get out in the sun
• go to beach
• tidy
• work hard...

And the "work hard" bit is getting kinda lost in there. So for the past 48 hours I decided to toss all the other goals out da window and JUST WORK HARD.

And it's working. Wonder of the One Track Mind.

And, I'm please to say, that my web biz has bought in more money today that ever before in its 3 year life. YeeeHaaaa!!!

...just feeling a little tired right now.

Meditation Spectrum

Most people think of meditation as focusing 100% on one thing (usually your breathing). At other times you drift off and are focusing 0% on the One Thing. And when you start meditating your meditation session might go something like this:

34 seconds 100% focus...
4 minutes 0% focus...
22 seconds 100% focus...
2 minutes 0% focus... etc. etc.

And they envisage that if they keep the meditation up and really work at it, eventually they'll be able to change the sessions to look something like this:

2 minutes 100% focus...
30 seconds 0% focus...
3 minutes 100% focus... etc. etc.

And they imagine that a meditation master's meditation session looks like this:

1 hour 100% focus...

BullPoo!!!

This ALL or NOTHING mentality has nothing to do with real life - it's all a construction of the human brain.

Real meditation starts off with you being, say, 2% aware of your focus point, while simultaneously 98% unaware. Simultaneous, get it.

And the more you practise, the more the underlying "aware" proportion grows. So, like, you might get up to 40% aware and 60% unaware. Co-habitating. So that even while those pesky thoughts of the deadlines sitting on your desk tug away at your mind, underneath there is this persistent pool of conscious awareness.

It makes sense if you take the time to think about it. I mean, fck man, if anybody could totally, 100% focus on something, and 0% totally non-focus on everything else - their heart would stop beating before you could say "failed fine-motor control".

And the reason we meditate is so that the positive benefits spread and permeate to our everyday life. What kind of benefit is it gonna be to focus 100% on, say, the sound in your ears, when, say, you're driving down the highway at 120k per hour? BUT: carry on about your everyday stuff with this underlying reservoir of focused, grounded, C A L M, even while you're arguing with your dickhead boss - is good, good stuff.

And today is fckn Monday, which, according to my little grey poll in the right bar => is overwhelmingly the worst day of the week for a BiPolar soul.

Why I've stopped Reading

Don't get me wrong, I still read, but my reading habits have changed considerably this year. From the time I sold my business (2001) until last year (2005 for those that might not know) I used to crunch about 10 books a month. Hardcore non-fiction. Quantum physics. Postmodern existentialism. Along with these delightful reads I would read books (still non-fiction) on whatever latest hobby I was interested in. Motorbikes. Music. Hiking. China...

I should have realised something was amiss in August last year when, attracted for the first time in my life to Classical music, I immediately ordered a couple books about it. Something shoulda shreiked out then: "Listen to the fckn stuff damnit, what the heck is reading about it gonna do???"

And then somewhere, sometime, I read a little story which shook the shit right out of me. it went like this:

One day you're wandering along your path of life and you come upon a Y junction, and need to make a choice. The one spilt has a large sign saying "Paradise this way". The other split has a large sign saying "A book about paradise this way" Which one you gonna take?

Well, I can tell you in all honesty: at that point in my life it wasn't even a question - go read up on it man, you gotta be knowledgable about these things.

And that is how I came to realise that something was VERY wrong. As the zen masters say: "I was eating the menu rather than the meal."

So I've ditched reading books in 2006. I'm proud to say that I've only read one book this year. And I've definitely upped my DOING. It's like you get the READERS and the DOERS, and I've cancelled my esteemed membership to the former.

OK so I still read, but 90% of my reading now takes place online. My RSS feeds, and other clickety diversions. And a couple magazines every month.

Even the magazines, I'm way behind on, but I plan to play catch-up this weekend. We're heading to a cottage up the coast for my sister's 40th Birthday. I'm outta here...

Struggling

Feel like a giant octopus wrapped me up in its tentactles, sucked every drop of energy out of me, and then spat me up on the rocks. Even the reserve tank is empty.

Just getting here, to the cmptr from bed, was a major mission. ENERGY, people, is where it's at. Energy, I have come to realise, is the liquid gold that drives this puzzling life.
But unlike petrol (gasoline), you canno' buy it, no matter how friggin high the oil price is. No, it's one of those self-contained systems where you gotta manufacture your own. And when your manufacturing plant goes haywire - you're on yer own mate. The pDocs can fiddle around amongst the cogs and wires, but energy-manufacture is still the holy-grail. And Dan Brown hasn't solved it yet.

The whooshing sound of critical deadlines whizzing by is deafening. Can't even hear my music any more.

Ah fck. One good thing about this island though - new weather will blow in within a day or 2. It better, or this whole goddam factory is gonna shut down.