Moderately Bi-Polar

This is not to take away anything from people that suffer from this horrible mental illness. I've known some people with this disease and its a very serious thing.

That being said, I can sympathize in a very mundane kind of way. Everytime I start work on a new project I can go through these wild mood swings. One day I'm high as a kite, the next day the entire world's out to get me. Intellectually I try to maintain a level in between, but emotions are powerful forces in our lives.

The reasons I think have to do with the sort of super concentration required to get a writing project off the ground. On any journey the first steps are always the hardest, and even though you try to ease into it, starting to write something can be like physically smashing your head against a wall. Until you develop a thick cranial ridge to absorb the blows, you tend to get messed up a bit at first.

As it turns out, this is precisely controlled by my emotions. If I write well, I'm flying. The world is my oyster double deluxe bacon cheeseburger. I'm ready to accept my Nobel Prize for Literature. If I don't write well, or if I don't write period, then I feel as if my writing skills are diminished and I have failed and will not go Into The West with the other elves. My light has gone out in the world. I am but a shadow of my former self. I do not know what I am doing here. I am utterly lost and alone and... well, you get the idea.

Of course, what makes it worse is that starting to write is like dropping a giant rock in the pond. It creates these back and forth waves where the highs are tied to my points of high energy and the lows are tied to the depths of my fatigue. The result of this is that I can write a great three pages at night and feel so exhilarated that I'm literally bouncing off the walls like someone dripped espresso intravenously into my brain while I was writing. I can't get to sleep... until about two hours later when I crash. Then, no matter how well I wrote the night before, I wake up feeling despondent and depressed and suddenly the CRAP that I wrote the night before comes back to haunt me reminding in mocking tones that I am just a hack.

Eventually, I will get into a rhythm. The highs and the lows will moderate and the writing will just become a chore to be done. And then all the drama will be gone and I will just be Will... although a bit more tired than normal.

I can't imagine what this sort of life might be like on a continual basis. I say some pretty stupid stuff when I'm depressed, and I'm too damned cheery when I'm not. I can only guess how much worse it must be to have this stuff hit you out of the clear blue. I know people who have had the disease and who have done some horrendous things while under its control. Compared to that, a few undeserved shout outs and a little unnecessary pouting are but minor quibbles.