Mood Roller-Coaster

Since I was a wee lad (or a little sh*t, as they say down South where I'm from), I've had fairly dramatic mood swings. At one time, I was diagnosed as cyclical depressive. This was revised, after an anti-depressant made the mood swings worse, to bipolar type II. Whee, enjoy the ride. I actually do. I'm reasonably well-adjusted to what some people choose to call a "disorder."

Such a condition is dramatic, but not all bad. For one thing, having a mood-based psychiatric condition such as this gives a person an intellectual intensity emotionally-stable people lack. It also unfortunately, gives one periods of sloth-like torpor where you do a classic crash-and burn for indeterminate periods. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to maintain what is euphemistically known as a "real job." So most bipolars either get on disability, enter institutions, or do what i do: become gainfully self-employed. I work as a self-employed entertainer. Fortunately, I'm fairly successful at it.

Complications arise when you decide to live with someone else, as say-- a spouse. Now they have to share in the roller-coaster ride. Alas, not everyone is cut out for the ups and downs. So bipolars are not known for successfully maintaining either jobs or relationships. It is hard to live with me, I freely admit. Add to my frequent passionate focus on my work and interests my just-as-frequent crashes; heck, I wouldn't want to live with me. So I salute my wife''s patience. I love her very much and try to show her I do. But the reality in my head doesn't always match the world around me. I live in my own "bubble world" where everything takes on an operatic niceness. I don't watch news and try not to wallow in the word's misery, so I probably miss a lot. Or, considering the state of angst most of my news-addicted friends are in, maybe I'm not missing much at all. When the apocalypse charges in on fire-breathing steeds, I'll be sitting at my piano working on an adagio, humming to myself while the rest of the world tumbles screaming into the abyss. What a final scene. Almost operatic.

But the advantage, I guess, is that this mental intensity allows one to learn very fast. There's a type of tunnel vision that can set in which allows you to focus your entire brain on whatever catches it. I wrote my first major book, Runic Palmistry, in two weeks while under the spell of this focus. This isn't atypical. Friends who've stayed with me have expressed their amazement over how motivated and driven I am. Obviously, they've never known a bipolar in one of his or her productive phases.

The point: Spring seems to have arrived, and my mood is finally picking up after winter's down cycle. Now I can really hit the road running on this piano business.

It's probably a good thing I live in my own bubble world. I could be easily discouraged if I faced reality. After all, I'm fifty years old. When I go to the music building, where all these tiny, eighteen-to-twenty-something kids are practicing their hearts out in almost-soundproof rooms, I see their well trained fingers flying all over the pianos. Some of thewe youths have probably taken lessons since they were four years old. I saw an online posting from a kid who asked if he--at the age of eighteen--was starting too late to learn to play classical music. Ah me. If he only knew. Jump to it kid. You have plenty of time.