Category Archives: Bipolar and Overambitious

Do You Dare To Dream?

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It seems like having Bipolar Disorder is a whole exercise in lowering your expectations about life.  Can I achieve anything?  Often getting through the day has to be the achievement that I aspire to.  This makes the dreams I have particularly painful.  You see, I have big dreams.  I wish I didn’t.  I wish all I dreamt was to work a job and pay the bills.  Maybe I could achieve that.  I wish that were enough for me.  But it’s not.  I dream of owning a home, of having dogs again, of having a garden, of starting a community homebuilding program to help others achieve their dream of home ownership . . . these are big dreams.  And they are front and center in my mind.  These dreams even appear in my sleep!  Last night I dreamt that I had two white Great Danes (my dream dog, I have had Great Danes in the past).

I often ask myself, why do you have to dream?  Can’t you be happy just existing?  Can’t being stable and living out of the hospital be enough?  But it’s not!  I have these dreams!  Do I have them for a reason?  Are they meant to be realized?  Or are they just pipe dreams?  Maybe I should take the “Dare to Dream” signs down.  Maybe I shouldn’t dare to dream.  Maybe it’s just making me unhappy.  Maybe it’s just giving me Reverse Gratitude and I should just focus on being grateful for what I have.  I don’t want to fall into a trap of feeling sorry for myself, that’s a rabbit hole I could fall down and have a hard time coming up from.  Is there a way to be grateful and still have dreams?  Can I be compassionate for myself and my dreams?  Can I accept them as just dreams – and nothing else?  Not meant to be reality?  The answer is no.  I believe that they are meant to be reality.  How do I get there, that is the question.

I’m wondering if my fellow friends with Bipolar Disorder have dreams that seem unachievable, and if so, how do you deal with them?

The Grind Is Getting To Me!

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Oh, Glory!  The book that came with our class (I’m sure you know what class but it is Certified Ethical Hacker) is an absolute piece of shit, basically the slide-deck that the teacher uses each night for class.  It’s all graphics and bullet points and no actual substance.  So, I bought a book from Amazon to help me study for the certification.  And the REAL grind has begun.  Again.  I know now what it takes to get a certification, it takes giving it your ALL.  I have been reading the new book ALL DAY.  I created a calendar with a schedule of how many chapters I need to finish per week and it’s fucking intense!  This fucking studying is some lonely business!!  I know it’s time-limited, but my feelings don’t know that.  I just feel lonely and super-tired of studying and I want to do something else.  I know, I know, where’s the gratitude?  For this great opportunity?  Well, I’ve lost it.  Perspective, out the window.  I need to get it back and be able to buckle down and focus and do this.  Ok, Ok, I’m ahead of schedule.  I had one chapter as this week’s goal and I’m on Chapter 2.  I just want to be done and certified already.  I need to be ok with this process.  I don’t know if I have it in me to do this again.  I think I need a hug.

Overdoing It . . . Again!

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Well it seems that I’m never going to finish cleaning out this fucking storage unit, but what I will do, over and over, is overdo it!  I had twelve boxes left in there and some other miscellaneous shit (isn’t there ALWAYS miscellaneous shit?) and I told myself that I would bring home four boxes over the next three days.  WELL I got there and I don’t know if it was the Adderall talking or the morning coffee, but this inner dumbshit got all gung-ho and said “I GOT this!” and I loaded up the car with TEN boxes.  It’s so fucking easy to load from the storage unit!  About five steps from the unit to the car, plop, on to the next.  And then I got home.  And I have to come in the front door, through the living room, family room, down the stairs to the basement, open a little trap door, climb up onto my desk, hoist the box in, crawl into the crawl space, pick up the box, and go stack it somewhere.  Which begs the question…what in the fuck is WRONG with me???  What made me think I could do this TEN TIMES in a day???  Yes I have a bad back and bad knees and a little thing called “Fibromyalgia” and I’m almost fifty years old…does the word “limits” mean anything to you?  No.  I guess not.  So I actually just got all the boxes downstairs, sitting on the floor, fucking up my Feng Shui, nothing has been moved to the crawl space yet, and I’m icing my back, writing this, and cursing myself.  I don’t know why I make such poor decisions.  You’d think I’d learn.  Does anyone else have the fantasy that they’re still in their twenties and can do all this shit lickety-split?  There must be a name for it.  Besides STOOPID.  Oh well.  My break is over.  Time to go move some boxes.  Hope you’re having a stellar Leap Day!  Peach out, homies!