Part Time Blog - Full Time "Manic - Depressive"

Part time blogging is good. It is exhilarating when you are finally able to sit down and write what has been on your heart and hit publish! Many of the blogs I read are from people like myself who write part time. Depending on their lifestyle, some are able to post everyday, or at the very least a couple times each week. Others do the best they can.

I am reminded of an email, followed by a message on my blog when I first started out that if I wanted to be successful, I had to write every day -without fail. This message came from a very successful professional - full time expert - who writes three blogs of his own, and is contracted out by numerous other blogs. I guess he makes a great deal of money from his writing. For someone who had never set up a blog in his life; was going through a difficult time personally; and was writing about a very sensitive subject, this was extremely discouraging. For sometime this bothered me. Then I realized this expert blogger did not bother to read the title of my blog; did not read the purpose this blog was set up; and most certainly did not read what condition I was going through at that time.

Each of us who write "part time"  have different lifestyles and schedules. For me, I hold down a job that takes up to 9 -12 hours a day. Take all the other things going on in my life (sleep must come in there somewhere) and there is a very small window of opportunity left. But aside from all of the above, I believe we are missing the point. "Part Time" blogging and "manic-depressive disorder" does not necessarily mix well together.

I had been mentioning how my state of mind has been changing. I took the "Manic - Depressive" test again the other day-as I call it - and I still score 8 out of 9 symptoms - some always constant. Then, if not bad enough, in the middle of the major swings, I experience a "mixed state" where the moods change in and out, one from the other, many times both simultaneously, quickly and without any warning.

 Now here is the main point I want to make. When I swing into the "high" phase, it is rarely when I'm sitting here at this desk. So, what I do (yes...sometimes going down the road) I keep a large notebook with me and I am scribbling in large words all over the place, taking notes ninety miles an hour! They are good ideas, dreams of what I want to write that I cannot sit still in the car. Sometimes, it comes upon me when I am at work. When I am trying to sleep. Anywhere, anytime. I am so excited, I cannot wait to sit here and type it all out for you. Then when I sit here, I read the notes, and they do not make sense to me. I am depressed. How can someone admire the fiery colors of a rainbow, or the beauty of the rose garden when they are depressed. The colors are dark. Grey is around me. I do try to write using my notes...I try so hard, but my feelings are not in it and to be honest, the notes I took does not make sense to me.

It is even so hard for me to explain this because I am not in the best of conditions tonight either. As I was fighting this on going battle for sometime now, I just stumbled upon a quote from Kay Jamison that may help explain it a little better:

"In addition to the changes in mood and thought that are brought about by mania and depression (and the experiences - both good and bad - gleaned from the pain intrinsic to melancholia), the less dramatic, day-to-day aspects of the manic-depressive temperament can provide artistic advantage as well. For individuals who live with moods that change often and intensely, life is a tempestuous experience. The manic-depressive, or cyclothymic, temperament, carries with the the capacity to react strongly and quickly; it is, in a biological sense, an alert and excitable system. It responds to the world with a wide range of emotional, perceptual, intellectual, behavioral and energy changes, and it creates around itself both the possibilities and chaos afforded by altered experiences and fluctuating tempos. In a sense of depression is a view of the world through a glass darkly, and mania is a shattered pattern of views seen through a prism or kaleidoscope: often brilliant but generally fractured. Where depression questions, ruminates, and is tentative, mania answers with vigor and certainty. The constant transitions in and out of these constricted and then expansive thoughts, subdued and then violent responses, grim and then ebullient moods, withdrawn from and then involving relationships, cold and then fiery states - and the rapidity and fluidity of moves across and into such contrasting experiences - can be painful and confusing."

I wish so much I could "call upon those mania" thoughts at will while I am sitting here. If it was not for the above, I would write more often. It is so difficult to write when the words come one at a time, and all the notes you took even hours before does not make sense to you, or at best, because you have come down to a very low state, you have no idea what they mean. If I did succeed, it would not be real, therefore not true to my myself, or you!

I'll be back...as soon as I can.

"My (confused) Mind"