A Little Spring Cleaning

So I've been doing this blog for some time now-- I just reached a milestone of over 5,000 pageviews.  I thought I'd try and do some organizing around here-- sweep up the leaves, turn over the compost, pick up the fallen fruit, and try and make some more sense of things.  So without further adieu...

I am bipolar I, which means I am subject to the possibility of manic episodes, as well as depressive ones.  I had my first hospitalization because of a manic episode while I was traveling in Greece in the summer of 2001.  I'm hoping to write a book about the experiences I had there, chronicling the onset of illness and my recollection of events.  I have blogged about some of my experiences with mania already, but I feel that I haven't fully told the story from Greece.

I was also hospitalized back in February of 2008, when I had a manic episode and had to be taken to VMC in San Jose.  My wife called 911 after I "lost it" and pulled the television out of the entertainment center and thrust it to the ground.  I became violent and through a chair and stripped myself naked and attempted to go out of the house, all the while screaming a litany of expletives while on a tirade about how the president had violated me.  I was finally calmed, clothed, and placed in restraints on a stretcher and taken to the mental hospital.

There was a turning point for me a while back--  I write about it in the post "Now What?" It's the point where I started taking responsibility for myself and my health.  And it has brought me to this time, when I am feeling recovered.  And that is a new, unfamiliar thing for me to be experiencing.

If you'd like to know of a place to start, you gotta find it somehow.  And you might not even really be aware of it-- that you're starting something.  But you are; you're in the right place.  Trust your intuition, your heart.  And you will find your path.

For more on my experiences with my bipolar disorder, check out The Comfy Seat and Writer Writes of Whiter White. 

Dreaming Face Fractals

Do I dare do two Journal Jar entries in the same day?

Here goes something--

What is the weirdest dream you've ever had?

Well now, that's just impossible.  I have too many weird dreams to choose from.  They're all extremely weird.  Dreams can be that way.

Face Fraction

One of the weirdest sensations I've had while dreaming was the feeling that I can't wake up completely.  This has happened several times.  In the dream, I realize that I'm asleep and I'll start trying to wake up, trying to move, but I'm separate from my body.  I'm just thinking, detached from the physical body.  I try to move, to slap myself in the face to wake me up, but nothing works.  I usually end up trying to yell something, screaming.  Sustained straining and screaming starts to move my body away from the deep slumber, and I'll whimper or moan as a connection starts to establish itself.  After what seems like a long and drawn out struggle, I awake to myself yelling and sit up with a start.  I usually still feel drugged, heavy, drowsed, but I'm rattled and anxious now.

This dream led to my central struggle in the plot of my short story that I wrote in high school, called "Death of a Nerd."  Someday I'll have to post it.  I have to unearth it from all the writing stuff I have amassed.  It's in here somewhere.

I have a lot of writing that I've already done that hasn't seen another person's eyes.  And a lot of it might just stay that way.  I wrote a lot of journals when I was younger.  It was therapy before I could afford regular therapy.  Writing is powerful like that.  It gets the stuff out of your head and into your hands so you can work with it, like clay.  Once it's out, you can organize it, shape it, work it into something.  And it clears space for the origination of greater thought.

I worked today on my sort of children's book.  I'm thinking more and more that I just need to get on with it and make some dumb ass drawings for it and get it done so that I can publish it myself and give it away to Armand and Melissa before their kids are in college already.  The book was born over ten years ago already.  Ten years.  That's a lot of reading time.  A children's book takes only minutes to read.  How long do they take to write and illustrate?  A little longer, I'm guessing.  A little longer.

Anyway.  Back to the weird dreams... I've blogged about them before: see the Dream of Life and Goals Work to Make Dreams Reality.  Also Return to the Journal Jar.  Do check them out.  I don't recall having much weirdness happen in my dreams as of late.  So I'm due.  Maybe tomorrow I'll have a real doosie.  Or is that Duzy?  Douxie.  You get the idea.  Something major.  Until then, then.

Most Read Blog Entries

The top 3 most read blog entries I've done are "On Writing," "Return to the Journal Jar," and "We Endure to Beat It."  The success in these entries to garner readership is unexplained, really.  I could use a professional opinion regarding this issue, but I don't know where to find one.  So I'm just throwing it out there.  May the universe reciprocate and take care of me.

I am finding that I'm getting more page views than I used to, now that I'm blogging more regularly.  What is it that brings you back, dear reader?  My bubbly personality?  Or is it the puns?  Or the runs?  Is there levity in reading my musings?

I invite you to comment.  Ask and you will receive.  I bring gifts.  All you have to do is read a little, maybe click on some ads, and keep coming back.  And it will all work out nicely.  Very nicely.

If I make money with this blog, enough money that I can keep the creditors and debtors and whatever other "ors" at bay, I'll throw a freakin' party for y'all.  Click the ads and you're on your way to making a party!  It's that simple!

Stay tuned for more great party insights right here at Tripolarity: Living Bipolar.