Monday, December 22, 2008

December update

Well, it seems I'm long overdue some updates. I haven't had any manic episodes lately, but rather miss it in a way. There was something different about the day after the night I went to the hospital with an apparent manic-exhaustion attack (although perhaps a heat exhaustion attack, at least partly). The following day, it was as if my eyes were opened, and I saw everything in a new light. Actually, I felt a depression lifted. I acted drunk, although I wasn't (apparently, at a drum circle at Greenlake that Thursday, which I joined, the leader thought I might be drunk, though he didn't mind my presence at all. I assured him I wasn't. But I was unusually giddy.) I seemed also hyper-sexual, which could be a bit embarrassing to think of but I didn't act on it in any overt way, it's just that I noticed women even more than I normally do. The most pronounced differences were probably a dropping of my normal low-level depression and fear, and a dropping of my normal critical nature and tendency toward negative judgement. And for that moment, or for those hours, I felt like things that used to matter really didn't, and that all my old fears and negative judgement were really fake and based on an incorrect perception of reality, and that this new reality I was perceiving was the "real" one.

I still would like to return to that, someday, but am not about to smoke coke to do it. (!!! ... of course not.) Nor do I think that taking an excess of energy drinks and alcohol for three days, lacking sleep, in an attempt to reproduce the experience, is particularly wise, and besides, I wouldn't likely have the discipline to push my body to those extremes. I'd more likely nap, take it easy on my body, if it weren't for that new job I had that week (in the first week!). Well, the job only lasted 6 weeks, and perhaps it's largely because of the bad patterns I started out with. But perhaps I knew I could not tolerate that boss for long. Micromanagers are not for me.

So lately, I work from home, on a project that, well, I haven't done as well on as I should. I had a major push on it in October and early November, but have yet to resume quite the same energy, since my 2-week visit to family in Chicago and Hartford areas.


Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Gödel, Escher, Bach

My older brother gave me this book around 20 years ago, and only now am I getting back to reading it. It talks about paradoxes, which often involve contradictions of a sort, such as:

This sentence is false.

Or systems of true statements which collectively form a paradox:

The following sentence is false.
The previous sentence is true.

It reminds me of the many contradictions or seeming paradoxes I seemed to be observing during my self-diagnosed manic state. I would like to return to that state, but under more controlled conditions (or at least not in the middle of the workweek...) I would like to maintain it in a form. Perhaps it is close to the "normal" state of functioning for most people. It seem to me it involved loss of fear. Maybe it had to do with nearly collapsing (heat exhaustion), yet "surviving" the incident, and after that my mind was "tricked" into dropping fear. Almost as if I'd had a few puffs on some good quality pot. (haha...)

Well, I'd better get back to work....

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Celia - Trag aer in piept

I played this about 10 times this morning. Trying to figure out how many times before I stop loving the song, but I seem to just like it better after several more playings... Sure, it might be partly that I have the video, and she's about as hot as they get (ha...), but no, it's mostly the song.

Beautiful song.

Lyrics in Romanian and English. I might just have to learn Romanian...

http://www.allthelyrics.com/forum/romanian-lyrics-translation/30401-please-translate-celia-trag-aer-in-piept-in-english.html

Trag aer in piept / I breath
Ma indepartez incet / I go away slowly
Ma indrept catre strazi cu soare / I go to streets with sun
Stiu ca nu e drept / I know is not fair
Dar ma-ndepartez incet / But I go away slowly
Nu mai pot sa te iert caci ma doare / I cannot forgive you anymore because it hurts me

Trag aer in piept / I breath
Ma indepartez incet / I go away slowly
Ma indrept catre strazi cu soare / I go to streets with sun
Stiu ca nu e drept / I know is not fair
Dar ma-ndepartez incet / But I go away slowly
Nu mai pot sa te iert caci ma doare / I cannot forgive you anymore because it hurts me

Noaptea ma topeste / Night melts me
Incet alunec spre ea / I slowly slip to her
Simt doar un val de lacrimi / I feel waves of tears
Ce spala fata mea / washing my face
Te vad dar nu ne ajungem / I see you but we don't touch (meet, see many contextual synonims)
Doar noaptea in vis / Only in dreams in the night
Ai cheia ce deschide / You have the key which opens
Un suflet inchis / One locked soul

Trag aer in piept / I breath
Ma indepartez incet / I go away slowly
Ma indrept catre strazi cu soare / I go to streets with sun
Stiu ca nu e drept / I know is not fair
Dar ma-ndepartez incet / But I go away slowly
Nu mai pot sa te iert caci ma doare / I cannot forgive you anymore because it hurts me

Amintirile se sting usor / Memories are easily extinguishing
Recunosc ca-mi va fi dor / I admit I'll miss
Trag aer in piept / I breath
Ma indepartez incet / I go away slowly
Nu mai pot sa te iert / I cannot forgive you anymore
Caci ma doare... / Because it hurts me

Ca soarele si luna Like the moon and the sun
Noi nu ne intalnim / we never meet
As vrea macar odata / I would lie just once
Noi doi sa stralucim / bouth to shine
Te vad dar nu ne ajungem / I see you but we don't touch (meet, see many contextual synonims)
Doar noaptea in vis / Only in dreams in the night
Ai cheia ce deschide / You have the key which opens
Un suflet inchis / One locked soul

Trag aer in piept / I breath
Ma indepartez incet / I go away slowly
Ma indrept catre strazi cu soare / I go to streets with sun
Stiu ca nu e drept / I know is not fair
Dar ma-ndepartez incet / But I go away slowly
Nu mai pot sa te iert caci ma doare / I cannot forgive you anymore because it hurts me

Amintirile se sting usor / Memories are easily extinguishing
Recunosc ca-mi va fi dor / I admit I'll miss
Trag aer in piept / I breath
Ma indepartez incet / I go away slowly
Nu mai pot sa te iert / I cannot forgive you anymore
Caci ma doare... / Because it hurts me

Trag aer in piept.... / I breath
Trag aer in piept... / I breath

Friday, July 18, 2008

Stabilized

Probably. As of just a day or two after the episode. And, as I feared during the episode (while I was definitely, in my own perception, talking and thinking fast, ideas and thoughts coming up almost faster than I could process, and calling a few people to talk about things during it all), after the episode of "mania" went away, I practically forgot it existed. I mean, I know I felt different then, and was convinced my mental state was dramatically different, but now (in my "normal" state of mind), it hardly seems like it happened, and that state of mind I was in doesn't seem so strange or abnormal. Partly I think it's that I'm not used to not being depressed, since 99% of the time I am. My only escapes from depression are alcohol (at least 5 or 6 drinks I think; 1 or 2 just makes me mildly drunk but does not sufficiently subdue the depression) or weed. But that stuff doesn't seem to be legal, last I checked, so it's been a while... If only I could have a "normal" brain. Perhaps I destroyed my seratonin neurons that one time I took MDMA (xtc), but I don't really think so. I seem to recall feeling rather depressed or frustrated most of my life, at least since pubescence if not before. It might have to do with some sort of imbalance caused by an inability to properly digest milk or wheat (gluten), but I don't think it's that simple either, because I don't have either of those every day. I do think the doctor who diagnosed me as severely depressed in 2003 was essentially right, though I'm so used to the state of mind that I didn't really realize it.
The funny thing is, I don't act it lately, so I'm not sure all I'm saying is even true (right now). I just know that I swing into a depressed/discouraged/frustrated state of mind sometimes, and sometimes stay there for weeks or months. Right now I am mostly encouraged about my progress at a new job and prospects for continuing there, or heck, if I lose it, my ability to find another.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

[ [ Lie To Me ] ]: *everybody's fool*

[ [ Lie To Me ] ]: *everybody's fool*

Everybody's Fool - The Evanescence Reference

Everybody's Fool - The Evanescence Reference

I have a strange fascination with that band. The music is dark, yet melodic. But I'm a bit hypersensitive to portrayals of negative emotions and their reactions, at times.For example, take this video, "Everybody's fool". The pain expressed by Amy Lee (lead singer of the band) is great, and identifiable to anyone who has ever been lied to in a big way, and made a fool of.But when Amy smashes her hand through the mirror and pulls it back to bandage it up, bleeding profusely, I not only cringe, but almost feel the pain. (As you can imagine, I haven't been watching many horror movies in recent years.)http://evanescencereference.info/wiki/index.php?title=Everybody's_FoolVideoEverybody's FoolThe video, directed by Philip Stolzl, is a live action video that portrays the life of a glamorous superstar (played by Amy Lee) who is really unhappy with the way she portrays herself in the media. She sells Lies consumer products (perfume, pizza, energy drink, and a little doll). Towards the end of the video she expresses deep regret for selling Lies in the first place.The video was filmed in Los Angeles in mid-April 2004. It quickly became a fan favourite. a.. Watch the video on Evanescence.com

The End of the Inflation Scare? - John Mauldin's Outside the Box - InvestorsInsight Publishing

The End of the Inflation Scare? - John Mauldin's Outside the Box - InvestorsInsight Publishing

911 Links - Did eyewitnesses report hearing or seeing bombs and demolitions explosives in and around the towers?

hmm, the other side of the argument
911 Links - Did eyewitnesses report hearing or seeing bombs and demolitions explosives in and around the towers?

www.TruthRing.org » prof-graeme-macqueen-118-witnesses-the-firefighters-testimony-to-explosions-in-the-twin-towers

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GZHY_enUS241US241&q=macqueen+118+explosions

118 firefighters reported explosions

http://www.truthring.org/2008/05/17/prof-graeme-macqueen-118-witnesses-the-firefighters-testimony-to-explosions-in-the-twin-towers/

9/11 The Myth and the Reality: Dr. David Ray Griffin

9/11 The Myth and the Reality: Dr. David Ray Griffin: "/11 The Myth and the Reality: Dr. David Ray Griffin - 98 min - Oct 18, 2006
n/a - www.truthring.org

(564 Ratings) Rate:
Composed of two powerful speeches given the masterful Philosopher and Theologist Dr. David Ray Griffin at The Commonwealth Club in San Franc...all » Composed of two powerful speeches given the masterful Philosopher and Theologist Dr. David Ray Griffin at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco (4/3/06) and at The Grand Lake Theater in Oakland (3/30/06), 9/11: The Myth and The Reality exposes the official story of 9/11 for what it truly is: a sacred myth. Throughout this incredible video, enhanced with forceful images and video segments, Griffin details nine of the most commonly held myths and misconceptions about the events surrounding 9/11 and with logical precision proves the fallacies of each one. Each speech is followed by an in-depth question & answer section featuring hard-hitting questions about 9/11 posed to one of the subject's foremost scholars.«"

Friday, July 11, 2008

Borderline Personality Disorder and Schizoaffective Disorder - Bipolar Disorder & Manic Depression Treatment Help, Symptoms & Signs of Depression

Borderline Personality Disorder and Schizoaffective Disorder - Bipolar Disorder & Manic Depression Treatment Help, Symptoms & Signs of Depression

Bipolar disorder explained: mania and hypomania defined - Mania & hypomania defined - Bipolar disorder explained - Bipolar Disorder - Black Dog Institute

Bipolar disorder explained: mania and hypomania defined - Mania & hypomania defined - Bipolar disorder explained - Bipolar Disorder - Black Dog Institute

Freedom Or Fascism: The Time To Choose - NEW 3 Disc DVD

Freedom Or Fascism: The Time To Choose - NEW 3 Disc DVD

David Icke

http://youtube.com/watch?v=OoiVp62NMLA

http://books.google.com/books?id=vUe6AAAACAAJ&dq=David+Icke&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result

bipolar DSM IV

http://www.mental-health-today.com/bp/bi1.htm

doing the impossible

There must be a Dilbert like this somewhere...

Do it my way!

What's your way?

I don't know; you show me the results and I'll tell you if it's my way!

That's the kind of contradiction I feel like I am dealing with here... working on a project with no specs, and a manager who just wants it done (like yesterday...)

Oh well, small companies almost never really know exactly what they want. Ask the users, I think, but if it isn't my job to ask the users, what then?

Hmm. Pray for a new contract?

The irony here is that actually my client (boss) is very personable, and in many ways a very good manager. But he and I are yet to learn how to operate "in-sync", so to speak, because we approach problems dramatically differently. I want business specs, not to be told how to do things, and he's used to thinking he knows best how something should be done.

rapidly changing thoughts

Ironies abound partly merely as a result of self-observation in a state in which thoughts come and go so quickly that if one is to observe one random thought and then the next they might appear to the outside (or inside) observer to be so different as to be contradictory, when in fact they are merely random. Do you follow me? (I sure don't...)

Which isn't to say I'm hyper-manic now. I slept a lot last night, if you can call 11:30pm to 4:30AM "a lot". (6 hours, much more than my average this week.) I think I am merely a mild-mannered manic, this morning.

how this started

That is a very very long subject, which is out of scope in its most exhaustive examination, but let me back up just a few days or weeks.

This = manic episodes, and even hyper-mania.

Hypermania = anxious, stressed, but ironically more aware in many ways, enhanced perception, because brain is running "a million miles a minute". Does this make sense to anyone but a bipolar? Probably not, but think of the last time you had 10 to 100 cups of coffee (a possibly fatal dose I think) in an hour or two, or the last speed trip you are on (Never for me for either, except one MDMA and that didn't feel all that speedy. Note that I was unaware of the controlled status of MDMA at the time, in 2000, because some fellow raver sold it as if it were a healthy supplement. Hey, it was my first, and last, rave (in a club that soon thereafter shut down in a drug raid...))

Anyways...

Stress of a new job with no written specs was a factor. Overexcitement at my substantial pay rate (ahem....) leading to a bit of mania on Monday night after 4 beers seems to have precepitated this event. The stress of 5 caffienated drinks a day on Monday and Tuesday leading to virtually no sleep those nights (2-3 hours a night). My body crashed tuesday night and I could barely take the bus home without falling asleep on it. The wednesday bus was even harder. Then I crashed in a hot bed with a comfortor on for a nap, forgetting to drink water first. I awoke more tired and groggy, and started to fear something was wrong. It took a while to self-diagnose heat-exhaustion, and another two hours to get passed my embarrassment enough to call 9-1-1.

After that, fire department volunteers arrived in seconds to question me. Then an ambulance, and I was off to a hospital. I chose Northwest, since I used to live up there and prefferred it to downtown. (Makes less sense to me now considering work is downtown and I could have almost walked from Harborview... plus a cheaper ambulance ride if closer... but that was the thinking at the time.)

I did not realize I was manic or hyper-manic until significantly later, after some self-observation and reading. It seems to have been an overcompensation; once my brain had a chance to sleep some, it decided to drop the depression and enter the reverse state. Everyone I complained to about this state seemed to think it perfectly normal (despite how different I felt having observed such rapid coincidences, contradictions, and irony ... all of which is difficult to explain without several examples, but my manner of speaking and writing has changed, to the extent that I contract myself a lot, writing either a self-contradictory sentence, or one which contradicts the previous one, yet is ironically "True". Again, it would take some examples, or a book, but I have to get going to work...

Cory Doctorow ?

A young guy griend recommended weeks ago I download and read "Little Brother", by Cory Doctorow. I thought, "I don't have time for this", and half put him off, while at the same time writing down the name and visiting the author's web page and reading about his free e-book. I downloaded a couple of podcasts of his, listened to some, then deleted them I think, all a month or so again. Well, JC, now I'm reading little bits of it and agreeing that alothough the story is not to the liking of many people (see some Amazon.com reviews), the writing style and the fact that this guy wrote a novel in two months (several times average speed for an author, I am guessing), and due to the unusual writing style (not as bad as e.e.cummings, nor Shakespeare, but nevertheless rather long sentences), perhaps this guy was at least slightly manic at the time he wrote it (at 10,000 words per day for 8 weeks.)

The manic state is in a sense a hyperfocused state, yet unlike the tunnel vision of some hyperfocus states, awareness can be either larger or smaller, I think.... I could still walk or bicycle and talk on the phone, for example. What was strange was that I felt certain that others perception of me had changed very dramatically. For example, I have a bad habit of looking at women, and often they look back. Well, in what I deemed to be a hypermanic state yesterday, I felt certain that they were not just looking back, but smiling a lot as they did so. I had to disengage, and stop looking so much at faces. This was too scary, because I felt not in control of it.

My mind raced, as I considered all the possibilities, some of which are too embarrassinig to admit here, but perhaps the most embarrassing (not to me per say) and definitely the most horrific to me of all is the realization that it seems likely (if not inescapable) to me that my younger brother went to prison for some bad judgement calls he made (over a period of months) while in a hypermanic state led on by stress of overwork, combined with the stress of feeling that his wife didn't care about his needs and their combined financial needs (i.e. she was reckless, in his mind.)

In other words, he's in prison for 10 to 20 years due to a (temporary and highly treatable) mental sickness.

That isn't fair.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Thought processes are erratic in mania, because although memory seems to pull out random facts from everywhere, verifying them is impossible due to stress and perceived lack of time.

Judgement, also, though still functioning in the sense of guarding some types of repetetive thought processes (based on my success in riding the bike while talking on phone and looking down to avoid the further distraction of the cars but nonetheless maintaining balance and direction correctly as long as i was sucessful at moderating my speed), was neverthless impaired for meta-processes of reasoning (reasoning about reasoning.) This impairment seemed to manifest as a lack of impairment to me (the observer), since I no longer seemed able to tell myself some types of thoughts were totally inappropriate. This was somewhat scary, because manifestation is connected rather directly to thought, therefore i needed to regain focus to be able to think properly on the meta-level as well as on the direct thought process level.

Re-integration of the brain should do it.

I think this may be a function of sleep. I'll try getting a full night's this time....

split brain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain

stolen joke

A guy bought a new fridge for his house. To get rid of his old fridge, heput it in his front yard and hung a sign on it saying: "Free to good home.You want it, you take it." For three days the fridge sat there without evenone person looking twice at it. He eventually decided that people were toountrusting of this deal. It looked too good to be true, so he changed thesign to read: "Fridge for sale $50." The next day someone stole it.



(stolen from some girl's tagged profile)

lithium=eggs

http://www.naturalhealthtechniques.com/Diet_Nutrition/lithium.htm

Just self-diagnosed mania

I keep reading about Lithium. Maybe I'll listen to the song... oh that's by Nirvana.


Any other ideas?

I'm looking for mostly natural treatments, though I'm not averse to swimming for days on end with no food or water if that's what it takes to get back to reality.

No one understands my irony in this hyper-manic state, the way I do. Except other bipolars, of course.

They probably just see it as bitter sarcasm, though it is really quite the opposite.

I would write an outline, but am not patient enough, but one other think I am wondering is who else was like this? Mozart? Shakespeare? I'm doubting Einstein; my math seems to really suck right now.