Touched By Fire

"Great wits are sure to madness near allied And thin partitions do their bounds divide." - John Dryde

I woke today at ten to four in the morning and headed straight for my workspace, pausing only to take my meds. I was interrupted by a text message from a server, but that's besides the point which is that even though I was half asleep I needed to finish the painting that I'd started.

The thing that disquiets me is not that I was compelled to the easel in spite of the early hour and lack of sleep, but that the desire to finish came from a backlog of images in my head...images that I needed to get onto some sort of surface before I lost them.

I have a small sketchbook I keep on me at all times for that reason, but it doesn't quite get rid of the anxious need. That only goes away after I've translated the sketch into the final medium, whatever it is.

Kay Jamieson came to mind, which led to a Google, which led to this article and the excellent quote at the beginning of this post. I couldn't put my thoughts about this phenomenon into words better than the writer of this piece, plus he includes links to the books I'd been looking for.


Side note: The post title is shamefully stolen from the title of one of Kay Jamieson's many thoughtful books.

Self Talk

I hate that phrase. It reeks of motivational speaker, up with people, positivism crap that annoys me to no end. Using self-talk when depressed is like the Dutch boy and the dyke; one finger isn't going to hold back the entire ocean.

That being said, I have to say that, when combined with the right medication cocktail, self-talk is an effective measure. If you can find the right combination of words. You'll know when you've found them when something clicks in your head when you say them out loud.

Here are a few that click for me:

"I'm doing the best I can with what I have right now."

"I will make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. That is the nature of life."

"Failure is okay. It is good soil for the next try."

How Am I Not An Addict?

It's been a while for a number of reasons, none of which I'm prepared to go into at this point in time.

The main question that has been on my mind as of late is in the post title. More and more I've been wondering this, especially at times like now when I'm sitting here waiting for the meds *cough*Adderall*cough* to kick in and stop this pain.

It doesn't help that I have to take more Adderall XR than most for it to be effective. According to my pdoc, most of his patients can get by for an entire day on a single 30mg pill. That same dose in my system would get me, at most, 3 maybe 4 hours of decent functioning. As it is, I take 60mg of the XR variety plus 10mg of the plain in the morning, and another 30mg booster at noon. For those without a calculator, that's 100mg total: 90mg of the XR and 10mg of the plain.

It also doesn't help that first thing in the morning I feel like crap until the drugs kick in and right around elevenses I can feel the stuff wearing off. Add to that the possibility that I may need to boost the noon doseage and how am I not an addict again?