Within the next day or two, WillSpirit shall be moving to a new hosting service. Once effected, the change will be in the background, but there will be a period of downtime as I set up the file structure on the new server. If I planned it properly the transition could be done seamlessly, of course, but for reasons I won’t go into it makes sense for me to accept a brief interruption. Shortly after the move you will also see a change in appearance.

My initial three-year hosting contract is about to expire, which affords me the opportunity to move to a more reliable service. The more important point being, of course, that we are approaching the anniversary of this blog’s launch on 29 May 2009. The landmark date has me reassessing my blogging goals.

You may have noticed that the last two posts presented poetry. Verse permits me to approach my usual ideas aslant rather than head-on. In essays I often feel forced to make a decision between heartfelt revelation and airy philosophizing. Sometimes I combine the two, but such coupling feels strained. Poetry, on the other hand, gets right to the source and energy that most drives my writing: the integration of mind and heart. Or left and right brain hemispheres. Or Will and Spirit, you might say. Perhaps this blog was always meant to be a home for my poetry, and it’s taken me this long to understand.

I’m not saying that poems are all that will ever be posted here. Look at what I’m writing now, for instance. But rather than avoiding verse out of fear of lost readership, as I’ve done in the past, I’m going to write as my muse moves me. I hope whatever shows up will appeal to some small number of visitors. Maybe there will be a shift of demographics over time. Or maybe there will just be a decline in popularity. What matters is fidelity to my own needs as they evolve.

Perhaps it’s time to pass the torch. In that spirit, I’ll mention a few sites that have come to my attention recently. All three cover topics that have long fascinated me.

A new blogger has been in touch with me from Canada. She is getting started with a site called Sensitive Soul. She hasn’t yet posted much content , but she appears to be headed in a direction similar to my own.

A reader sent me a blog post from a writer for The Times of India. The author of this journal is related to the reader who refers me, but that doesn’t negate the essay’s quality. The young blogger explains that value in life comes from the journey of living itself, whereas the details of what happens along the way are less important. With the right attitude, we can be happy no matter what fate brings. In her youthful enthusiasm, the author glosses over the difficulty of hewing to such Grace in the face of harrowing bereavement and trauma, but youth must ever remind us that life once looked easier, right? By the way, The Times of India website is loaded with great essays by a wide variety of bloggers.

Finally, I met recently with Larry Berkelhammer, PhD, a retired psychologist with much experience in the area of helping clients cope with chronic conditions. He writes with exceptional clarity about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Positive Psychology, and Mind-Body Medicine. In particular, his site contains a number of essays and videos that describe ACT concepts quite nicely. I suspect the self-help public will be hearing much more about Larry’s work before long.

What’s next for WillSpirit? Time will tell. Fortunately, there is no shortage of great and heartfelt blogging going on, so I feel free to write as the Spirit moves me. And so I Will.

One day in kindergarten, the teacher taught us how to cut a circle out of construction paper. We were making cards, or posters, or something, and we each needed a red round. She started with a square piece of paper and cut off the corners. This led to an octagon, and she cut the corners off that. She continued cutting the increasingly obtuse angles until she held a pretty circle in her hand. It was obviously an efficient method, perfect for five-year-olds.

But I wasn’t buying any of it. The method looked too mechanical, too slow. Why not just cut the shape freehand? Which is just what I did. Or tried to do. Instead of a four-inch diameter circle, I ended up with a two-inch ragged pear. It proved impossible for me to cut a circle by eye; no matter how many times I went around it with scissors, my creation looked anything but circular. The teacher, rather smugly I thought, used me as an example for what happens when you don’t follow directions.

I have always had a hard time doing things the way everyone else does. I’d like to blame my father’s ranting against “the establishment,” but it seems unlikely that his politics were to blame for my contrariness in kindergarten. My refusal to follow normal patterns probably contributed to later career misadventures, relationship difficulties, and health problems. It would have been so much easier to choose the field of study I enjoyed rather than one that seemed more impressive. My life would now be richer if I’d focused on raising a family rather than neurotic fears. My health would be better if I’d never wasted time with marijuana, alcohol, and so on.

Some people seem blessed from an early age with knowledge of what’s important in life. A good friend of mine in college happily pointed out pregnant women, because he was so interested in starting a family. Nothing could have been further from my mind at that time. He now has three delightful offspring, and I have none. Other friends chose careers they felt passionate about, and some have achieved significant success as a result of their healthy decisions and years of perseverance. I, of course, find myself in retirement at age fifty-three.

So there has been a price to pay for nonconformity. Many prices, in fact. But today, it makes more sense to focus on what was gained instead of what was lost. By operating outside the mainstream, I’ve learned that life can be valuable even if it doesn’t follow the healthiest path. I’ve found that although a family and satisfying career no doubt help one find satisfaction, they aren’t essential. Even in the midst of pain and disability, life remains fascinating and often beautiful.

So although I’m prone to break down and often feel discouraged by my fate (which I admit to having shaped by my own choices), I spring back soon enough. And each time I rise up from despair I feel less tainted by it. Learning that the mere process of living is enough, no matter what goes wrong or how much it hurts, is of inestimable value. It leaves me ever more certain that I will weather whatever destiny may hold in store for me.

You have a right to be skeptical after my last essay. How can someone who entertains suicidal fantasies claim resilience in the face of hardship? My only defense is to say that resilience doesn’t imply that one is upright and rigid like an obelisk. Instead, it suggests the suppleness of a sapling, which can be flattened nearly to the ground by blasts of wind, but then springs upright once the storm clears. Having been knocked down countless times by circumstance, I now feel confident of my ability to bounce back.

And let me emphasize that this has been a learned skill as much or more than an ingrained trait. In younger years a single perceived rejection could lead to weeks of self-contempt and withdrawal. Nowadays I can ride out debilitating pain, humiliating treatment by a new doctor, utter cluelessness about my purpose in life, and still feel fairly happy to be alive once I get the initial tantrum out of my system.

Whence this ability to find satisfaction in the face of discomfort? It came from meditation, introspection, writing, and practice, practice, practice. Luckily, life has provided me many opportunities to develop a talent for rising up again after pain, disappointment, and despair knock me down.

Work and productivity. Who needs them?

This is a question much on my mind now that I’ve dropped back into retirement. The last post detailed my angst around this topic. Today I offer one line of thinking that helps me maintain sanity in the face of abundant free time.

Freud considered work one of the pillars of successful living. The vaunted Protestant work ethic remains a standard in this country, and it isn’t limited to Protestants or the United States. National economies are judged on the basis of Gross Domestic Product. Corporations celebrate increased productivity in their communications to stockholders.

Each of the sentences in the previous paragraph offers a different perspective on the value of working and production, but they all reach the same conclusion. Psychologists who disagree with Freud about almost everything else would still concur that work (along with love) leads to satisfaction. Religions of all stripes value community involvement, and many embrace concepts similar to the Buddhist one of Right Livelihood. Countries are deemed in ascension or decline depending on whether their economic output is growing or stagnating. And companies push their workforces ever harder in attempts to squeeze out more product per employee.

You can see these perspectives vary in their humanism. Psychologists value individual wellbeing. Spiritual leaders promote communal advancement and personal involvement. Nations insist on expansion. And corporations demand maximal profits. Most readers attracted to a blog like this will recognize the value of individual and collective health but question nationalism and blind profiteering. At least in principle, they would agree with the pursuit of Right Livelihood.

In principle, so do I. But what happens when repeated attempts at productive work fail? How does a person feel worthy when physical and mental difficulties limit employment?

Let me begin by saying that I continue to help out when possible. I try to support my friends. I do a little volunteering. I offer love and attention to my wife and dogs. Judging by the comments and emails, this blog seems to assist others in their growth. These are all contributions that should not be discounted. But my number of hours spent performing anything resembling work is embarrassingly small. I do a little, but not enough to count for much in this culture.

Does that matter? Can we be sure our conditioning to work, work, work makes sense?

Let’s investigate the above realms in reverse order, starting with the corporate. What percentage of manufacturing actually benefits the collective good? My guess is no more than half. The rapacious exploitation of resources and promiscuous marketing of gadgetry only hastens the collapse of our ecosystem. The heavy burdens placed on workers, who toil for subsistence while those higher on the socioeconomic scale reap vast profits, can hardly be viewed as beneficial.

It’s difficult to consider the community of nations healthy when each member strives to dominate as large a sphere as possible. The US struggles to maintain its influence as China rapidly aggrandizes power. Smaller countries fight neighbors with weaponry and trade laws. Granted, nations are gradually losing ground to corporations that defy geographical boundaries, but this only reduces local control over the environment and workplace laws. The decline of national power does nothing to slow the trend toward ever more production and consumption.

Perhaps we can dismiss the ethic of productivity as touted by corporations and nation-states. But can we feel morally justified in the pursuit of leisure? What of the spiritual and psychological motives for work?

Spiritually, we are called to help those in need. But this doesn’t necessarily imply long or difficult labor. Certainly, those with abundant energy and resources do well using their bounty for good works. But we who are more limited can feel fine doing less. Why not pick up a little litter while walking the dogs, and call it a day? Smiling at a friend, or even an enemy, offers a bit of support without burning up reserves. Helping out can be done on a small scale. I doubt there are divine forces condemning those who spend more time relaxing, and less time striving. After all, Jesus asked us to “consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin…” (Luke 12:27).

Psychologically, work helps because it gives meaning. The trick, then, is to find meaning with less work. This can be a challenge when we’ve been conditioned to measure the value of employment in terms of hours expended, dollars earned, or projects completed. But what if part of the value of a job comes from the freedom one enjoys by not spending all day working? There’s a hint of this in the way people plan for retirement. Why not combine work and retirement rather than doing first one and then the other? A society that builds labor-saving appliances would normally be expected to encourage leisure rather than labor. Maybe we can find more meaning with less effort.

No doubt these sound like shallow justifications for my lifestyle, now that I’ve given up on striving. But although I’m riffing on this topic out of personal necessity, I do think we have been seduced by a work ethic that might once have made sense but now makes us miserable. After all, the world doesn’t need more product; our ecosystem is screaming for relief. Unemployment would end if each employee worked a third fewer hours. People might feel joyous if they could spend more time with friends and family and less time toiling.

I’m not suggesting laziness, just studied leisure. I wouldn’t advocate hours in front of a television set, but why not spend some afternoons at the local park? How about daily meditations under a tree or weekly reading groups at the library? If there are any imperatives in life, one must be to enjoy the beauty of this miraculous cosmos. We can’t do that if we spend the bulk of our time working.

The MR scan result came back with bad news on two fronts. First, it failed to explain the pain shooting down my left arm as something simple and treatable. Second, it showed that a previously normal disk is now protruding to the point of slightly flattening my spinal cord. As you can imagine, this is a discouraging and frightening finding.

Spinal canal stenosis in the neck can become a big problem. It can cause numbness, paralysis, and incontinence. Surgery, though available, is highly risky and entails a long recovery time. It’s not always successful. But as I keep reminding myself, the problem hasn’t gotten to that stage yet. Right now, the only ominous indicator is a gray and white image on a computer screen. No tingling, no weakness, no leakage.

Ah, to live within a frail biological organism. And not within, truly, but as one. We all know our human forms don’t last forever, and with aging we see signs of the inevitable. Granted, not everyone faces such looming problems at age fifty-three. It’s tempting to feel sorry for myself, but that would be short-sighted. Sooner or later we all confront serious difficulties with our bodies. Some expire in infancy due to prematurity or genetic disease. Some succumb to accident, murder, or suicide as young adults. Some confront a diagnosis of lethal cancer in midlife and wither away within months. Some endure to die of old age and its accumulating vulnerabilities. And everything in between happens too.

Just moments ago I watched our eleven pound poodle mix, Ralphy, reclining in front of the wood-burning stove. He looked blissful with his half-closed eyes, ears flopping on the fireside cushion we lay out for the dogs. I feel happy knowing he rests peacefully without worry nibbling away at his serenity. It pleases me to provide safety and comfort for such a darling creature.

Then I extend my perspective. Somewhere, perhaps not far from this little mountain cabin where we take our vacations, a young man and woman are cuddling in front of a similar fire while a frigid storm rages outside. They are freshly in love and holding each other with a mixture of desire and affection. They are not troubled by ragged vertebral columns and endangered nervous systems. They are enjoying youth and all the pleasures it brings, even as they remain ignorant of how transient this vitality will someday seem.

I feel exactly as satisfied envisioning their happiness as I do watching my little dog. If my wife and I had children we’d no doubt be living vicariously through them as they ventured forth in the world and sampled its allurements. In absence of such immediate family, I do something similar by imagining how life keeps marching forward with each young generation. This lessens my concerns about my own future. I see how much bigger the human story is than my own little mix of fortune good and bad.

So much gratitude: for my loving wife, two sweet tiny dogs, a comfortable home and even a vacation cabin. So much pain: shocks down my arm, cramps in my gut, endless aching in my spine. Pleasure and pain. Joy and sorrow. Contentment and regret. On and on and on.

Biology is a dual process of growth and decay. Today my ego can’t help but contemplate an undesired medical result and the deterioration it announces. But my larger mind remains focused on the timeless majesty of life, which keeps cycling through its appointed seasons. There is ruin. There is springtime. And there is springtime among the ruins.

Today I had my sixth (or seventh?) Magnetic Resonance scan. This seems worth mentioning because for every previous MR study I’ve taken a sedative. Not today.

In the past my anxiety levels were high and the idea of being squeezed into a long, narrow tube felt terrifying. To slide into that device without a heavy dose of something like Valium felt inconceivable.

But nowadays my anxiety is less severe; and when it arises, it troubles me less. My meditative skills are solid. And I know better than to imagine the building bursting into flames with me stuck in the maw of the scanner.

So I kept my thoughts neutral, my body relaxed, my mind focused on my breathing, and my eyes closed. Everything went smoothly. The one difference I noticed was that the scan seemed to last a lot longer than before, even though in clock time it was actually shorter. Something about the lack of sedation altered my subjective sense of duration. Other than that, the MR was a breeze.

It’s nice to have this marker of progress. Another sign of change is how my recent depression lifted fairly quickly. Only four days after my announcing a fair amount of despair, I feel much better. Partly this is due to my new writing goals, proclaimed in the last essay. But I’ve watched similar quick recoveries several times of late. Events depress me, but I bounce back sooner. Over and over.

Don’t get me wrong: my moods still feel brittle. I’m sensitive and easily discouraged; there is considerable downward pressure on my spirits. But I feel more buoyant than in years past, when similar states of mind lasted longer and pulled me in deeper before resolving.

What makes the difference? Less obsessive focus on feeling state helps me function despite depression; the resultant activity keeps me from sinking into the abyss. More confidence that I can tolerate what happens in life reduces my levels of terror and anxiety. A broader perspective on my history reveals that many painful events that once felt like burdens actually taught me valuable lessons. Overall, we’re talking about vastly increased acceptance.

But there is something else, too. Call it Faith. My worldview now includes the certainty that the universe is running properly and my presence here has meaning. It’s this conviction that has me planning of a new direction for my writing. Having always defined myself as a biologist, I now also see myself as a mystic. I suppose that makes me a Mystic Biologist. I’m happy with this identity, which feels like my homeland. I look forward to realizing whatever potential comes with this embrace of self and destiny.

Our acupuncture office has closed, officially and permanently. As we acceded to the inevitable, fortune smiled on us, in that another physician acupuncturist liked the space and assumed the lease. He also purchased some of the furnishings and equipment, which was helpful financially but also saved us the trouble of moving and storing heavy items.

Breaking down the office my wife and I worked so hard to set up made me sad, but at least there wasn’t much doubt about the decision. The business had been struggling from the get-go, and the many problems had stressed us both. After hospitalization I was left with a new source of pain (in my abdomen), worsened neck problems, limited use of my left arm due to nerve compression, and heightened psychiatric instability. Continuing to practice with so many impairments would have been impossible and also unethical, so finding someone to take over the space felt like a Godsend.

Oddly, it hurt even more when I revised my acupuncture website (this link will eventually be deactivated, but it’s good for now) to announce the practice closure. I’d invested a great deal of time in building up the site’s design and content. Posting an announcement to kill the project left me a bit shaken. But I see a positive aspect to this response: it shows how much I enjoy fussing with websites and how much creative energy such work absorbs.

It’s part of the reason I’m planning a big reorganization and upgrade to this blog’s format. The initial template that I chose in 2009 has long since been abandoned by its developers. I’ve been adjusting and altering it for years, and I’ve managed to keep it functioning, but there are many glitches and I lack the expertise to fix them. So WillSpirit will be moving to a new and more robust template soon.

The updated appearance will be less quirky and more pedestrian; it will look like a typical website. I’ll miss the old format, but change cannot be avoided, especially in technological realms.

I am currently organizing the archived posts into categories. The old Tag Cloud system is also being revised and is currently disabled. I apologize for that inconvenience, by the way, though I’ve never believed tags all that helpful for finding pieces of relevance. My goal is to make the new site a place where people can more easily find articles pertaining to their needs and goals.

So, in summary, a treasured but difficult and failing project has ended. This frees up time for me to further develop WillSpirit, which requires attention anyway. One endeavor ending, another reviving. Life moves forward.

On balance, I feel better about all this than expected. The acupuncture practice was supposed to improve our financial situation, but it actually ended up costing a great deal and did not appear destined to become very profitable. The answer to our budget issues appears to be ever-increasing frugality, especially as prices continue to rise. But one gains a spiritual boon in learning to get by with less, so I’m OK with tightening the purse strings.

I’m OK with everything these days: the new pains, the new sorrows, the ongoing uncertainty, the new directions. Through all this uproar my sensitive soul keeps learning. For instance, it’s nice to finally feel convinced that life doesn’t need to be comfortable to be valuable. I embrace it all, come what may.

The post I planned to write today will come later.

For the past several months a counselor practicing Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has been teaching me to expand my philosophy, and quit struggling against my hardships. My insurance granted pre-payment for twenty sessions, and I have completed 12 or 13 so far. My relationship with this clinician started at a propitious time, and dovetailed with my involvement in Bipolar Advantage, which teaches one to take a more positive attitude toward mood fluctuations. These two influences spoke to my gathering awareness that being frustrated and unhappy with ‘the way things are’ serves me poorly. They also bolstered my resolution to wean myself off as much medication as possible, a step made more essential when I awoke to the horrific damage psychiatric drugs have wreaked on my body.

This therapist’s work underlies much of what I write about accepting life’s deprivations, acquiescing to grief, and appreciating the sublime qualities of emotional distress. Knowing that outside of the sessions this person has kept up with my blog posts, and sends me insightful comments on how they relate to my individual story, adds to my feelings of gratitude. I wrote a letter (actually an email) of thanks this morning, and ended up sketching part of my core emotional landscape. Posting a slightly revised version of my message on this site offers my audience a view of my inner milieu, while at the same time publicly expresses my appreciation. Knowing that others share your experience can be very healing. I hope that one or more of my readers will resonate with my longstanding ambivalence about life, and also my growing desire for more engagement. ACT teaches, among other things, that while we all undergo times of distress and cataclysms of sorrow, we can remain open to common joy. Even more, during those shaded times when our days feel bleak and fortune has violated all its promises, it remains possible to enjoy being alive. Perhaps it is akin to loving one’s child even as he spits hostile words at you. He may not be pleasant, but he is still an infinite gift.

A large segment of the population staggers under a burden of emotional agony. If that were not so, investors in pharmaceutical stock would not be so well rewarded. No doubt people have always been afflicted by almost unbearable feelings, but in this era of education, abundance, sanitation, and comfort, I believe we can do better. Not that the pain will go away, but perhaps our appreciation of day-to-day reality can increase. Imagine a world where even in the midst of wage-slavery and fears of violence people relished being alive. Where they accepted their pain to the point that they had energy to fight against injustice. Where financial and material trappings became less important than human relationships and creative expression. The way to achieve this vision lies in opening up, ‘sharing experience, strength, and hope’ (as they say in Alcoholics Anonymous), and collectively learning how to thrive in the midst of a challenging world. I try to do my little part by deconstructing my rusted and creaking mental mechanisms to a behavioral health audience and handing on the tools and lubricants others have provided to help me get things running more smoothly.

This therapist gives me much in this regard. I publish this letter as a public statement of gratitude, with the prayer that programs and messages such as ACT will propagate outward into our culture, like the rings stretching away from a pebble pitched into a pond. Where the surface of my depression once looked as solid and impenetrable as a pane of glass, ACT shows that all pain has depth and rhythms, and that I can learn, grow, and even enjoy myself while exploring these textured realms. Of course, the ideal often lies beyond my grasp. My ability to take such a philosophical stance, and savor the warm sensation of blood pumping from my wounds, depends on practice and motivation. But I have been fortunate to meet someone who has had the patience to sit with me as I bleed, until I understand that unlike the blood that flows through my body, the blood of the soul is infinite. No matter how much I hemorrhage, I will always have the vital spirit to go on, if I choose. So much better than my previous experience in the mental health world, where the philosophy has always been to apply pressure and tourniquets. Sure, drugs can slow the rivers of emotion, but once you tighten the tourniquet the limb goes dead.

I place the letter here because it is more personal and less intellectual than much of what I write. I want to allow people to get to know what I’m really going through, rather than always hiding behind a facade of philosophy, analysis, and weak attempts at lyricism. Fact is, I am making progress, but slowly. I see the path ahead, but have yet to walk most of it. This message shows one footprint along the trail.

Dear [M],

I’m glad that my last blog post provided, at last, some good news in regard to my mental state.

Contemplating death as a solution has always seemed reasonable to me, given how my mother checked herself out of life as I watched. In the suicide hotline we always ask about prior suicidal behavior; I’ve only made a few weak attempts, none of which had a high likelihood of lethality. But suicidality has become a part of who I am. Even twenty years ago I was pretty sure I would some day kill myself. Obviously I have not, and may never, but I no longer feel alarm about thoughts of destroying myself. I think that attitude helps me support people who call the hotline in crisis.

On the other hand, I respect that such talk upsets others. I wish when in my worst moods I could censor my statements better. In particular, it is hard on Mandy to know how often thoughts of death go through my mind (not that I talk about it all the time, but it only takes occasional mention to make the problem apparent). Accepting that life brings pain, and that pain can be endured or even seen as a kind of beauty does not automatically translate into a desire to keep experiencing it. I am OK with that disconnect, but I am not so pleased that my ambivalence about life pollutes the happiness of those around me.

Back to today. Bottom line is I feel better, and happy to keep going. I truly do have a commitment to stay around for Mandy, and I would never leave my dogs unprotected. I even look forward to the future, no matter what it brings.

Thank you for paying attention, and supporting me as I work out a philosophy and mind-set that will carry me through the last several decades of my life. I need to have some kind of framework to both endure and see positive aspects to further declines in health, increased physical pain, and the probable loneliness that await me. Having a deteriorating neck that hurts all the time, and threatens the integrity of my spinal cord, plus knowing how few close relationships I have other than my marriage, does not give me a rosy picture for the future. I appreciate that ACT is not about convincing myself that my fears are unfounded (they aren’t), but rather gives me at least a glimmer of hope that I can survive the struggle. There is even that astounding suggestion that no matter what happens, my future can be enriching and full of adventure.

I look back at what I’ve written here and almost laugh at myself: this is how I think when my mood is more or less good (although I’m realizing my spirits are not as upbeat as yesterday). I don’t know how you feel about getting saddled with me for twenty sessions, but it has helped me that you have been so understanding. And I am thrilled that there is at least one person reading my blog who really ‘gets’ what I’m writing about. Of course, it’s not surprising that you do get it, since you taught me much of what I’m saying. What’s nice is that you’ve taken the time to read how I’ve been thinking about the acceptance philosophy. (You’ll note that I don’t do much with commitment, at this point. I need to more fully commit to staying alive before I can talk with any authenticity about fidelity to values, etc.)

To try to end on a positive note, I am highly motivated to search for reasons to stay alive, and to be glad I am. I want to build something more than a stoic fortitude to not abandon Mandy. Writing helps me feel good about breathing and thinking. Knowing that you (and hopefully a few others) find what I produce interesting makes it even better. In the end, creating something attractive and worthwhile out of tragedy and sorrow has been the task of artists throughout the ages. After decades thinking of myself as primarily a scientist, I now see that creative expression will be my salvation. That requires the knack of appreciating the heavenliness of heartache, which you and ACT have taught me.

Thank you.

Time to turn over a new blog leaf. Watching the growth in readership stall, and then the numbers start to dwindle, has happened twice since I began this blog (effectively July 1). Both changes occurred after I went nuts and wrote really long posts that had only a little to do with mental health. My tag-line is ‘Just another Mental Health and Spirituality Blog’, but the sites I visit are almost all mental health oriented. So far I’ve not found a spiritual blog community that would be receptive to my biologically-based views on ‘God’. Given that the conversation I’m entering revolves around psychiatric issues of one kind or another, I will try to keep my blog in line with that topic. You all are teaching me what interests you or, more to the point, what doesn’t. In the future I will put the long posts about memoir-related or spiritual topics on webpages separate from the main blog, and then just provide the links for those (few) who are intrigued. I also plan to (once again) try to keep the posts shorter. I’m not sure what my cut-off should be. Maybe under 600 words?

With this new resolve, and the fact that I am typing better today, my mood has improved. My left ring finger, wrapped in gauze, has the sensitivity and accuracy of an elbow. But it’s only real job is typing ‘s’ (‘w’ comes up rarely, and ‘x’ almost never); with practice, I am learning to get it right. As usual, my spirits bounce back when I accept things as they are. I need to be OK with my minor injury, and not hate myself for all it seems to imply about my loss of dexterity, trouble coming off Cymbalta, etc. (The things I whined about in my last post.) I need to recognize that blog stats are just numbers, and not the same as people. I need to be satisfied with having one or two commenters say they enjoyed a post. After all, that rewards me far more than when AwStats shows a large number of ‘visitors’ who may just be web-bots for all I know. I need to get used to the fact that my blog project will not take off immediately, may never take off, and that ‘taking off’ is not the goal anyway.

Like all of us, I have concerns about finding financial security. But the joy I get out of writing, and out of communicating with others who share my concerns, has nothing to do with money. I need to hold on to that truth, and not get distracted by my anxiety about paying the bills. As is so often the case, the rewards this task has brought me are different from the ones I hoped for. The large number of fine blogs, the difficulty in attracting attention, and the frustration of realizing people don’t want to hear my ‘loftiest’ ideas have made it obvious that notoriety and financial success are unlikely. On the other hand, I’ve made contact with special and sensitive people of like attitudes, and I am now writing far more than ever before. Even to someone with chronic desires for high-achievement (tempered only a little by a decade of failure), who was raised to value status and ‘winning’ over relationships and helping, those seem like pretty good results. Thank you to all of you who have helped me find this treasure.

I don’t disagree. And it’s not too radical.

I regret ever starting medication. But now that I’m on them, if I reduce the dose too quickly I get depressed. Yes, I can tolerate depression and even see some majesty in understanding how deeply sad and messed up the world is. But after weeks and months of that, suicide starts looking like a really, really nice option. I would have ended my life long ago if not for my wife. Since I don’t want to wreck her world, I choose to increase the dose to give myself at least a little will to live.

I don’t care whether you call it ‘disordered’ or ‘gifted’, it makes it hard to live. So hard that I’m surprised I’ve made it this far. Is it genetic? Probably; my mother killed herself. Is it environmental: Yes; I was horribly abused as a child. Do I care? Not really; all I know is I get very little joy out of life much of the time, and especially if I reduce the medications too quickly. That lack of joy is what led me to take drugs back when I started in 1995. They worked at first, then quit working. Now, like Alice in Wonderland, I need them just to keep from falling deeper, but I don’t get anywhere solid.

Cognitive techniques, acceptance training, meditation, etc., all do much more than drugs. And when I practice them diligently I do OK. But my point is that in my case whether it’s a gift or not it wrecks my life. There may be some nobility to that, but I don’t want to be a martyr and accept all the suffering of mankind at the expense of any enjoyment in life.

I don’t hear voices. I had one long episode of florid psychosis, during which I had powerful spiritual experiences, and some visual hallucinations with a chorus of angels singing in the background. Very beautiful. Went to the psych ward and had it hammered down to mere ‘delusions’ with haldol. I regret that. I don’t think it was illness; it truly was Grace. I’d gladly live in that state forever, regardless the consequences to my life.

But if I had voices telling me to kill myself and others, especially if I was trying to practice medicine, I’d probably get tired of it. Maybe those voices are demonstrating the truth: yes, the world is a painful place and what people are doing to it and to each other is brutal and ugly. Maybe suicide and homicide are the natural responses to this place. But for my part I would not want to live with that message being shouted at me day in and day out.

My impression from the film was not that Ruth’s voices left her. Rather, she learned to live with them. Good for her. I would not have made that choice, but it was a brave decision and I applaud her.

I use the term ‘psychiatrically disordered’ as shorthand for ‘having a mind that works in a way that doesn’t fit well with the modern world.’ It would be great if the world would change, but of course it won’t. If one wants to accept all the difficulties that having a ‘different’ mind bring, I don’t see any problem with that (provided the person doesn’t harm anyone besides himself or herself). I don’t even see anything wrong with suicide (outside of the pain it causes loved ones): in my opinion it is a perfectly rational response to this culture.

But many people want to try to fit in. My impression has been that for some people, the drugs help. When I get really hypomanic I sometimes am glad to take a pill to get some sleep. Yes, that reduces the edgy excitement of my experience, but I accept that. If I heard voices telling me horrible things all the time, and if a pill would help I would take it. Even if it meant reducing the range of my experience.

My concern is suffering. I understand that suffering is inevitable, even magnificent. But it gets tiresome. And it can lead you to kill yourself. Since I am not ready to do that yet, I take the pills that keep me from the deepest recesses of my abyss. Like I say, I wish I’d never taken the first one. I think I would probably be about where I am now, only I would not have the necessity to take a Wonderland pill just to stay alive. But whether that is true or not, I am currently taking the medications to take the sharpest point off my pain, though always trying to reduce the dosages.

Like I say, I don’t disagree with you. But (in this response to your response) I stand by the initial point I made in my comment about your post: every case is unique. I just want to be respected for my own choices and my own take on things. And I believe everyone else deserves the same.