New Years Eve!

I cut my Celexa in half. I was taking 20mg which is a 40mg pill cut in half. Now I am at 10mg. So basically I am taking a half of a half.

I had some anxiety and irritability the first couple of days. I seem to be alright now. But there may be other reasons for that. The real test is when I am back at work.

I got another book on success. This one is by the coauthor of Chicken Soup for the Soul series.

Anyway, see you next year.

Back to Work?

I don't think so! Yeah work is pretty much a dead place this week. That is nice. At my last job the end of December was crazy.

Anyway I am probably going off of Celexa. A side-effect has returned (or it never went way and I didn't realize it until a week ago). It's no good. It's working great but it's no good.

It's so fun playing the roulette game of medication.

I think I will try exercise, food, and vitamins for treating my anxiety. Has anyone out there had any success trying this sort of thing?

Anyway... my web site is in existence and is slowly going to appear sometime.

Here is the address: http://www.thechoiceofsuccess.com

I am happy with the hosting I have chosen. I am ditching my original choice. They haven't even set me up correctly yet. Screw them. So I found another host that has the tools I need and the same price and undoubtedly better tools for administrating.

Fun fun fun...

Now I just need content.

Mania!!!!!!!! Chaos!!!!!

Is it normal to listen to death metal really loud on Christmas eve at 11pm and mosh around your living room? Especially when you hate death metal?

Well a radio station is playing it and I have so much energy I am screaming along with it, playing air guitar, and moshing all around the living room.

Yeah I am manic I think

Happy Christmas Eve!

I hope you aren't out there shopping. I finished mine yesterday. Wow, Christmas is such a capitalist holiday! Unless you are Jewish and celebrate Chanukah. Or if you are part of another religion that does not celebrate it.

I woke up early today. I just woke up at 7:40 am and basically didn't feel like sleeping anymore. So I got up, ate some oatmeal, and got on the Internet.

It's actually kind of nice.

Progress

I got through the project release on Friday! Yay! It was nice to get that done. We all went home with smiles on our faces. I came home with a feeling of pride.

What I have done better lately at work is this:

- I organize everything I do
- Work efficiently
- Ask the right questions to the right people quickly
- Take pride in my work so I do the best work that I can

It is amazing what just organizing will do for you. Everyone else was scrambling to put things together. I had my stuff all ready because I organized it while I was working on it.

The Choice of Success
I have chosen my domain name and registered it with GoDaddy. The domain will be thechoiceofsuccess.com. I picked that name because it sums up everything I want to talk about. I also picked my host. I went through a lengthy list of hosts until I found one that met every criteria I needed. I have 30 days to decide whether I like the host. I will probably know 75% of it in my first three days of using it.

Off I go...

To heck with Friday

Let's go straight to Saturday! Party 'till the sun comes up. Yippee!

Whatever.

That's what happens to your mind when you work for twelve hours the day before. Tonight? Well tonight I will probably be working another "twelver." Why? Because we are releasing an end of year type project. Next week no projects. Yay.

I have trained myself such that it just flat out does not matter what goes on at work. But I could use a good night's sleep. I am waking up so tired. I pretty much gave up on the sleep experiment after reading the pros and cons of doing that sort of thing. I do not want to do damage to my health. Now I just want to find how many hours my body naturally wants and I want to have a set schedule.

I am going to purchase a domain name for my site tonight or tomorrow. I am also going to be paying for at least 3 months of hosting at one of the sites I was testing out. They have a 60 day money back guarantee if you are not happy with their service. If I like it, in three months I will pay for a year (or make monthly payments).

This new work I am doing is making me very happy because I feel like I am progressing towards something I have been wanting forever. I have also matured enough to realize that these things take time. It will be months before I have anything professional looking up. But, I will invite whoever to see the site as it progresses.

I will be incorporating everything I have learned in the last 5 years into something simple and concise that will hopefully benefit anyone who reads it.

About Less Sleep

I found an interesting side-effect to going to bed later and getting up earlier. Time does not matter so much to me anymore. Like before I would be upset if it was 8pm "too early." In other words I was so busy all of a sudden it was late so I felt sorry for myself.

The other fact I have found was, of course, I am more tired. That is why I have decided to limit it to 7 hours right now. That amount of sleep is what my body likes to get so I will give it that. I am going to do some research to see if it is possible to change how much sleep your body can get used to (or likes to get).

So I will not be pushing the sleep deprivation limits quite yet--at least not this week.

Crazy Ideas and Timelines

Stay up later and get up earlier. That sounds like a great idea to me! I am trying an experiment to see what my body thinks of getting 5-6 hours of sleep a night. I want a little extra time at night and in the morning to do things. Does that sound crazy or what!

It could cause mania. We'll see.

I need to get this out of my mind an on to virtual paper:

My Choice of Success Project:

Phase I - Content
I ran a quick estimation of the time line for putting together my content for my web site. I came up with about 3 months just for putting together the content--and that does not mean completing it. Basically I know that at the most I will average 2 hours a day on it.

I generally know how many pages I will have and how much writing will go into each page. I also generally know what the content will be. I am currently putting together some outlines, one of which I will choose for the web site.

Phase II - Graphic design
It's too early to put together any time line for this phase. Basically I will be putting together the color scheme, look and feel, and logos for the site. I will either to the design myself or I will have someone else do it. We will see.

All I care is that it looks professional--it does not have to be a work of art. (I am good at art by the way)

I most likely will be picking out a color scheme from this really neat book I have just to make it easy on myself.

Phase III - Tools
Basically I will be building a lot of tools for the site. I may enlist the help of others in order to speed up the process. All work would be done for free through an open source project.

Anyway from now on I will be posting blog entries about this on another blog:

http://choice-of-success.blogspot.com/

See you later

Announcement

This is an announcement of the Choice of Success project. I have found free hosting with hard-to-get-for-free tools that I am interested in using.

The website when it comes up (in about 4 hours from the time of this post) will be:

http://choiceofsuccess.somee.com/

I have a second website with a host that is missing one of the tools I want, but it may suffice. I will be posting to both sites when I have updates. Here is the other site:

http://choiceofsuccess.brinkster.net/

Right now I have a very generic start of a site--the typical "Under Construction" page.

I will be taking the culmination of what I have learned and I will be condensing it into something that will help people decide to be successful.

I am starting with a page about succeeding in managing your moods when you have mental illness.

This should be interesting so I invite you to watch over time as I build this site. Eventually I will get my own domain and pay for hosting but for now I have to start small. I can't pay even $5 a month for hosting right now--it would not be reasonable.

Along with the site will come an eBook with a similar or exactly the same title.

Have a nice day

Crash and Burn!

Last night I got stressed over not being able to find pay stubs from last month. Also I can't find last year's W-2s. Why do I need them? Because I am setting up payments for a mental hospital stay. We got a summons not too long ago which I had to respond to in writing. So now I have to show them what I make and fill out this form that seems like a damn loan application.

I would much rather just find an agreeable payment to both of us than to have to do this sh$t.

It's my fault for putting their payment below my credit cards. Credit cards were going to be paid first and then these guys. Yeah I meant to be sending them something every month but I didn't.

So I put my head under my pillow and went to sleep. Crash and burn.

As I say, now I must pick myself up and move along.

These are the changes I intend to start this week:

1. Shower every other day
2. Do my laundry
3. Look nice for work
4. Show up on time every day even though nobody else in my department does
5. Balance things out so that family, work, spirit, health, etc. all get an equal amount of fulfillment
6. Keep things organized at home
7. Study up on material related to my career I have been skipping out on
   
8. Start on getting my "system" down on paper for how I will do all of this and begin to write an eBook.
9. Get a web site with specific tools so I can practice my trade. I found a free one last night that is hosted by a Christian organization. All I have to do is pay for domain registration and follow standards. They allow the type of content I want to have plus they like to give sites to people who are trying to better their situations. There is another free one that I am registered with but they delete your site if you don't use it within a short amount of time. It is a pain in the ass to put it back up--plus I couldn't share it on this blog because it has my name on it.
   
10. Make some important phone calls
11. Do some stupid tasks
    
12. Etc.

I am sick of tired of not being who I see myself as.

Have a nice day.

'tis the season...

...to go shopping. Christmas is almost here.

Yes we pretty much spent the whole weekend shopping. I have no complaints though. Complaining is against my rules. I remembered some tools I have for when I get moody. For instance, if I find myself getting restless at a store I can be creative and find something interesting to do. Remember it's always a choice whether you want to get impatient or moody or if you want to be happy. I chose happy.

And now for something completely different.

I am finding that I have a pilot light still lit on the success stuff. I am realizing that all I have to do is make a few decisions and I will be on the path I need to be on. My instincts are telling me a few things:

1. I need to find a free or cheap web hosting site that has the right "stuff" for me to work with. I need to practice my job skills away from work where I am either to busy or too unmotivated. Plus I need to build a website so I may as well do it on a free or cheap site.
   
   I am looking to do this soon and will be sharing it on the blog so that everyone can see how it develops. It will not be much of anything at much at first but playing around.
   
   
2. I need to figure out what kind of business I am going to start and how I am going to go about starting it. I am realizing that my passions are the Internet, success, and anything else I have not been able to shake for years. If my interests last over the years even when I am not working on something actively, then that is my passion.
3. I need to balance this out with everything else
4. I waste too much of my time
5. I need to find more time in the day. Donald Trump does it by sleeping 4 hours a night. I'm not saying that I could or should do that but it got me thinking about my sleeping habits. I do not like to wake up in the morning and fight getting up. During the weekends I would like to wake up earlier but end up sleeping in a little too long. I want to fix this.

Anyway.

My general plan is this: Start doing real work towards my first business. I am thinking it will likely be a web site of some sort. I am also planning on putting together a simple system for myself to enable me to be organized, efficient, happy and then writing it down in a small eBook that will be provided for free as a first go at writing an eBook.

I am thinking I want a pen name. Who I am in real life is still going to be kept hidden. I do not want any of this to hinder my current career.

Gotta go

Efficiency

Temper tantrums, angry moods, depression, mania, euphoria, anxiety, etc.

These are all wastes of time. If you want to really get somewhere in your life, and I mean somewhere extra, you have to find some level of efficiency. The car won't go if you don't push on the gas. If you hesitate you will miss your chance to go because some car will come along and block your way. You will have to wait until the next chance to go.

This is my life.

How much average time do I waste during a week? Right now I am certain it is over 70%.

In all honesty I have no passion for what I do at work. I spend a lot of time not doing anything because I am not feeling it. Yes I get my work done on time--or early. I should be taking the extra time to learn more about what I do: programming. But I don't. Why? Because I chose not too. I have no passion.

The reason I am so passionate about reading biographies and self-help books is that I want to put together a system for myself that works. I want to break down the wastes of time. The mood problems and the emotional baggage that goes along.

The main motivation for this is that I want to have my own business and I want to run it at home. I want to earn enough money to have the things I want and not feel restricted. I want a website. I want a business. These two ideas have been in my head for YEARS. They will not go away. If I give up on the ideas. They come right back.

How am I going to get there? How am I going to achieve this?

By becoming efficient.

I am increasingly becoming aware of how much time I waste. And I am very aware of how I am not going anywhere. I push the gas. I Stop. I put the car in reverse and back up. I Stop. I push the gas some more. I Stop. I turn off the car. I start the car. I push the gas. I crash the car. I have to get the car fixed. Blah, blah, blah

JUST DRIVE THE STUPID CAR FORWARD AND TRY NOT TO CRASH IT AS BEST YOU CAN!

That is how I feel right now.

Obsession CAN be a waste of time if you are obsessing about the wrong thing. But if you obsess about the right thing you could go far.

Now I know that prioritizing is even more important. It was mentioned that sometimes prioritizing is fuzzy. You bet it is. You have to be aware enough of the situation to know if what you are doing is IMPORTANT. If it's not drop it. It does not matter if you suffer from bipolar disorder 1/3 is mood, 1/3 is your reaction to stimulus, and 1/3 is your health (exercise and diet).

I am starting a new challenge for myself starting now.

I am doing to focus on what is important and drop the things that aren't. I am going to look for things that are important to my goals (starting a business and a website).

When I figure it out I am going to write an ebook and publish it on this blog and on a website. It will be free and it will be directed towards sufferers of mental illness.

Have a nice Saturday!

Obsessive

I have always had an obsessive personality. I tend to latch on to something and become unable to let go until it's done or my body is so tired I have to sleep. It used to be things like games and programming projects. But I think a lot of the time back then I was being manic with racing thoughts and a euphoric need to keep going.

Anyway, I noticed that after my meds were working a lot of my obsession was about escaping. I really wanted that euphoric feeling I used to get. But I don't get that so much now so it is not as fulfilling.

For example:

Last night I needed to update my Google calendar, read emails, and budget. So I did. I spent a long time on the budgeting and I am not sure how much of it was actually helpful. I should have gotten off the computer at that point but instead I started doing random things I felt like doing--a complete waste of time. Sadly not much of it was fulfilling and I went to bed very late and feeling alone.

As Steven Covey said most of your time should be spent on things that are important but not urgent and to avoid things that are not important.

Side note: spending time on important but not urgent things will cause urgent things to come up less

So, in other words, I felt like crap because I was unfulfilled and I spent too much time on unimportant things.

In even shorter words: I didn't limit my time.

So tonight will be different. I will spend most of my time doing things that are important but not urgent (and things that are urgent if I have to). Then I should feel more fulfilled and happy.

Headache

Yeah I am having a headache pain-in-the-ass day at work. It just so happens that I also have a real headache.

Anyway, I just wrote this long rant and deleted out of the realization that ranting is negative and pointless.

I am going to go read for the rest of my lunch.

Oh My... Manic Again?

Part 1

Last night I didn't want to go to bed because I was too awake and thinking too much. I worked on plans and the budget until around 2am.

I woke up around 6am.
I got up around 6:30am.
I got on the bus to go to work at 6:55ish.

I worked non-stop all day long. I ate my sandwich around 3pm by taking a bite, running around helping out with major problems, and taking another bite, over and over.

I left work at 5pm.

Now here I am. I think yesterday's pissy mood was caused by a mixed mood. Part depressed and part manic. It was also caused by the fact that I needed protein. It was also caused by lack of self control. The comments in my last post helped me figure that out.

Interesting. Two-thirds of the problem were under my direct control. One third is under my indirect control (maybe if I exercised more, maybe if I hadn't missed one dose of Depakote, etc.)

Part 2

I want to share an old post I made here is a quick excerpt:

In my twenties I was not doing well. I thought it was just depression. I didn't see the mania yet although looking back I clearly had it. I was very secretive about what I was thinking about and what I was doing. Sometimes I would do what is called rehearsing suicide...

If you want to read the whole post go here: http://crazybipolar.blogspot.com/2005/11/bad-places.html

Oh My... Pissy Again!

I woke up today like I had something against the world I guess. In the car, just about to leave, I decided to just get pissy and freak out at my wife. For what reason?

None.

Truth be told if I were to practice what I am learning and preaching I wouldn't have to hold my head in shame tonight when she gets home at 8pm (the first time I will have had a chance to apologize). This would not have happened in the first place if I used what I know.

Set-backs are the path to learning and acquiring new skills.

So my wife has been hurt again but now days I do not blame it on my illness. Yeah my illness exists and if I let it happen it can get pretty ugly. I do not have to though. The million dollar question is, "How do I stop this shit from happening?" The answer? Cognitive therapy.

The billion dollar question? "How do I do cognitive therapy on my self?"

Self-help is inherently flawed. How can you help yourself if your self is fucked up?

Ciao.

Got Sick

I was sick on Saturday and Sunday. Then I hurt my back on Monday. Nothing serious. It was just enough to make me make me sit at my wife's work for 30 minutes while a huge dose of Ibuprophin worked.

That was my last three days.

Communication

The biggest thing I have learned from Steven Covey was something I never expected to. How to listen with empathy. It is far too easy to fall into the trap of coming up with a response while someone else is talking. You can't listen when you are thinking about what to say. Also, it is too easy to read your biography into their story.

I have found compelling reasons why one should just listen.

First of all listening with empathy is all about letting the talker know that you understand their message and their feelings. We all want to be understood. When we aren't we tend to back off a little. But when someone really listens you tend to open up to more and trust them more. You can gain a lot from that.

If it your spouse then they will feel closer and understood, if it is a child they will feel understood and would be less reserved and defensive. If it is a business transaction you gain more trust from customers or partners and will benefit from it (for example--get the sale).

Here are two (simple) examples of listening and listening with empathy:

Example 1
talker: Bob is a total and complete idiot--he gets under my skin
listener: Bob is an idiot. Yeah I had this friend named Dan and he always stole shoes from me that really got under my skin too.
talker: Yeah Bob is an ass

Example 2
talker: Bob is a total and complete idiot--he gets under my skin
empathic listener: Bob really annoys you.
talker: Yeah because he is always coming up with the stupidest ideas and tells the boss it was my idea when the ideas are laughed at in meetings. I always have to defend myself.
empathic listener: He blames bad ideas on you and makes you feel like you have to put yourself on defense. You feel it is unfair and wrong.
talker: You totally understand. What should I do about it?

So in example 1 the listener is not really listening but is reading this own life story into it. The talker does not really feel understood. In example 2 the listener is listening and is understanding both the concept and the emotion so the talker feels more inclined to share the talker feels understood.