Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do.
- Confucius
Something occurred to me the other day, perhaps as part of the clarity that I usually experience when coming out of an empty period, such as the one I was in for the past several months: Mt. Everest was once part of the sea floor, before rising to become the world’s highest elevation. Is our own potential so different?
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
- Eric Hoffer
It would seem as though the past time, since my last post, has been one of rather uninspired emptiness. Good things have happened, for which I’m grateful; but it seems like things just don’t ‘reach’ me the way they normally should. I believe this is a phase, and I hope to be out of it very soon. Some of the good things that have happened are that my son and wife are both in good health and my son is developing at the rate he should be, if not a little faster. I am soon to be in touch with a very dear friend, with whom I’ve not spoken for around fifteen years. We are also going to receive visits from family and friends in the near future. My son will start pre-daycare soon, as well – a milestone and tremendous social and learning opportunity for him, and a few hours per day where I won’t have to get the household squared away one-handed. Continue reading
Fortune cannot aid those who do nothing.
- Sophocles
I am recently returned to my home after a two day stay at the hospital. Rather than going in because I’m bipolar, I went in because I have sleep apnea and needed a full evaluation. This was a pretty significant thing for me, as I have an aversion to hospitals that stems in part from having seen too many family members die in one, and in part from a fear of being confined to the whims of doctors. I don’t like being hooked up to monitors at all, and the idea of turning myself into Locutus of Borg with cables, sensors and other stuff had my stomach churning in slippery knots. Go I did, however, and I must say that I’m a happier man for having done so. Continue reading
How dull it is to pause, to make and end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life!
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I wanted to post something here just to say that I’ve been trying to come up with a post or two over the past few days, and have had no success. If it weren’t for the bursts of energy I’ve had recently, I’d say it is likely I’m sliding into a really dreary sort of depression. I’ve had very little urge to do anything productive, and the things I normally enjoy doing seem to have really lost their luster. The worst part is that my creativity seems to have abandoned me outright, not that I was particularly blessed with great stores of it to begin with; and this means I’m not much of a blogger at the moment. I’m just going to bide my time for right now, and with luck, this will change in the next few days.
As hunger is cured by food, so ignorance is cured by study.
- Chinese proverb
I encountered a comment made in another blog today that got my hackles up. The comment was made by someone posting as Sara, in response to an article in the Furious Seasons blog, titled GOP Swipes Effexor Marketing Slogan, an article in which the author points out an advertising commonality between the US Republican party and the Wyeth pharmaceutical company. The very first comment to the article, in a half-cocked attempt to insult President Bush, his wife, and Hillary Clinton, assigns blame for “every idiotic, bizarre bit of behavior” on psychiatric medications.
Ignoring a desire to follow Sara’s line of reasoning to its logical conclusion and ask her what medication explains the idiocy of her comment, I have to wonder what goes through someone’s mind when posting something like that in a blog focused on mental health issues? People who are taking “psych drugs” are doing so in an attempt to eliminate the kinds of bizarre behaviors that make most people uncomfortable with us, and endanger us. We often endure hellacious side effects, and sometimes it seems like every single pill is just another reminder of individual malfunction … but each dosage taken is also an affirmation that we are working on our problems.
Taking these medications does not make an idiot of any of us, Sara; but in my opinion, your expressed inability to understand that makes you, and others like you, an ignoramus.
