Wednesday, November 26, 2014

You Do Not Have To Make Every Day Count

You Do Not Have To Make Every Day Count
So as a bipolar person I make the following statement, “You do not have to make every day count.”  Some days the most important thing, the most vital thing (vital as from the latin vitae, meaning life) is to just get through it.  Get through the day.  Also, I have spent my life as a professional artist.
Yeah, I’m one of those.  Still, hear me out.  I did not choose to be whacko, nor did I actually choose to be an artist.  Truly, true – I fell into it and had no plan B.  The art part is mostly a part of this blog because for an artist there is no time off.  If the brain is on, alive (dreaming is just another form of working), it is working.  By that I mean being all creative and imagination like and designing stuff.  This never stops.  Ever.
On a day like today – this is southern Virginia, way out into the woods, looking out onto a pond.  Turtle Pond in late November.  The leaves are all blown off the trees, it is raining a good solid rain … with wind.  The sky – slate … no clouds distinguishable, just a solid dead gray.  There   is   not   a   single   element   to   raise   the   spirits.  If you are a person that has to face a crisis of personal emotional inventory every morning, sometimes … some days … it is enough to just try very very hard to not think.
Because thinking for an artist is work.  ALL the time.  Now, there is a neural loop because of some kink in your physical organ called the brain.  It is that loop that is deadly.  Okay, deadly is too strong.  Lessee … uh, this is hard to get at.  Imagine (artists are very prone to visual analogies) a belt, like a car engine’s fan belt, continuous, running around and around without a buckle or any discernable end – or beginning.  That’s the belt – the loop of bipolarism.
So there is the artist brain that never stops working and then we add in certain things, that are called triggers, that kicks that belt, or loop, into gear and … well, we have a train on a circular track and there is a car stuck on those tracks.  What next?  What can happen next?  If the engineer can’t get the track switched – in time – to get that train off that loop (belt, track) then there is a collision.
And some days, all that that engineer (let’s say the engineer is the bipolar artist) can do is to focus on getting that track switch switched before the train hits the car.  This is the difficulty that people who are not stuck on a looping train track can understand.  First the engineer must accept that every day they are on that train and it is going to go around and around on that same track.  And every day they have to keep a sharp eye out for some idiot who is going to get his car stuck across those tracks.
It takes concentration.  That’s sort of like obvious.  So even when you tell other people who share your life paradigm, they still – they still park on your tracks.  Only an actual idiot does that.  Sometimes it’s their car.  And still they do it.  However, you are the engineer and if you hit the car, cause the collision, or derail the train, it’s your fault.  At least that is what everybody believes, or mostly generally believes.  An’ ya gotta live with it.
Now knowing all this ya still gotta live with it.  This is where we come to the bit about not always having to make every day count.  Count for what?  Count in what way?  Here’s another analogy: no, no – here’s a personal life story: … back to my 300 mile bicycle race blog.  Finishing a marathon race is not about making every step, or push of the pedals, count.  It’s about taking the next step, about pushing the pedals around one more time.  And then again and again and again, until you get to the end of the race.
When that race is over, you rest, think about it and get ready for the next race. 
So I find it has become part of what is called my recovery, to sometimes say “Hello” to the morning.  Each step (each day) is what it is.  Allow for that.  Some days I find I am fine with that much.  That is enough to make that day count.
 dalepeterson.us
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