Sunday, January 5, 2020

Are You Nuts?


The short answer is no.
But here’s the reason I am asking this rhetorical question: although many people are aware that I have bipolar disorder, a surprising number have scant conception of what it means. An extreme example occurred when I was watching football and the team I was rooting for scored a touchdown. A friend evidently thought that I celebrated too enthusiastically (which was probably true), and on that basis concluded I must be manic.
I didn’t mind (much): she wasn’t being mean about it, she was concerned about me. And concern for a friend is always appropriate. Yet this anecdote illustrates one of the realities of having bipolar disorder and having people in my life who don’t know much about it. People in effect think that you can never just be normally happy or sad. Everything you do or say can be pathologized.
During the weeks to come you’re going to see a flurry of activity that may animate fears that I may be hypomanic. And you may also see me publishing entries that appear to bear little relationship to one another, which may also excite concern that I’m a little off my rocker.
Let me do the best I can to explain why you shouldn’t worry.
First and foremost, this year I’m eligible for a Faculty Professional Leave; what in layman’s terms would be called a sabbatical. The deadline for applications is January 17, which gives me just twelve days to put together a proposal that’s likely to pass muster. Typically FPLs are routinely granted, but if it looks as if I’ve abruptly shifted from one book project to another without good reason, that may cause the evaluators to balk.
Second, if that occurs, and the department thinks I’m screwing up—well, although I’m protected by tenure, it turns out that I’m not protected from having my course load raised from four courses to six, which is the academic equivalent of being exiled to Siberia. That’s a worst case scenario, but in my experience worst case scenarios can sometimes turn into worst case realities.
Third, historically I have used the flexibility of social media to conduct work in ways not possible via traditional means. One advantage is that it annihilates the vast time from the time I write something to the time someone reads it, which means social media affords a medium in which I can receive feedback as I go along, and frankly the encouragement on which I thrive. Another is that it permits methods of laying out material that are impossible via ordinary means: in effect of teaching more effectively. One example is the ability I have to link to a performance of “Daylight Again/Find the Cost of Freedom,” which includes lyrics that speak directly to the central theme of the book:
I think I see a valley
Covered with bones in blue
All the brave soldiers that cannot get older
Have been asking after you
Hear the past a-calling
From Armageddon's side
When everyone's talking and no one is listening
How can we decide?
Next, it forms a convenient place links to articles, etc. that I may want to use in the conventional manuscript.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
It may also relieve your mind to know that in the past few days—that is, since I decided to make this a book—I’ve touched base several times with my therapist; and she thinks I’m not only “normal” but that my enthusiasm for this project is very good for my mental health.
So there!

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