On Friday night, I am getting on a BA flight from Logan to Heathrow to work out of our London office for a week. I love going to London, as it’s the only major city I feel comfortable moving around in without a car.
Besides work, highlights include the Victoria and Albert Museum, and possibly the Tate Modern.
If you’ll be in London next week, let me know! I will be on Skype and will have a UK number that my desk phone here in the US will be forwarded to.
Since August of this year, I have been exploring the insides of my mind in greater detail. If you read this blog regularly, you are pretty likely aware of the fluctuations in my mood, and the rationality of my behaviour.
If you get the chance, find and watch The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive hosted by Stephen Fry. In his open, intelligent and witty way, Fry tackles the topic of Bipolar Disorders (oh yes, there are more than one), including his own. If you can find it (you will have to try all of the usual channels to get it in North America), watch it.
So, why am I openly discussing the fact that I am Bipolar in a public forum? Why would I confess to the world, to people who may in the future meet me, or even consider hiring me?
It’s simple. Many months ago, I wrote that if you were going to hire me based on what I had done in the past, or what school I went to, I most likely wouldn’t want to work for your company anyway. The same applies to this illness, this condition I suffer from. If you or your company won’t hire me because I suffer from an illness that is beyond my control, that I will have for the rest of my life, why would I work for your firm?
I have had Bipolar for a long time. I can track the behaviours that identify the condition back into my childhood, through my teens, through until today. Normally, the cycling that I go through is benign, punctuated by periods of utter and complete hyperfocus. Most of the time, hyperfocus is a benefit for me — it is what got me through re-building the GrabPERF interface last year, and helped power me to absorb and write as much on Web performance as I have.
The manic side does have its pitfalls. My mania usually results in buying and spending sprees that have often endangered my financial stability. An example of this is my acquisition or stationery supplies, pen, notebooks and books.
Two weeks ago, I cleaned out my desk and aggregated all of the writing instruments I have purchased over the last 12 months. When I was done, I had filled a 1-gallon Zip-Lock baggie with pens, pencils, highlighters and Sharpies.
In my lifetime, I could never use them all.
I fanatically acquire notebooks. Rhodia, Moleskine, Rite-in-the-Rain, anything. How many of them have I written in? Well, lets just say that my kids will be using my blank notebook collection for many years after I have departed this world.
The spending sprees, the intense desire for the acquisition of things, is my most noticeable manifestation of manic behaviour. In most instances, the manic process starts to wind down after a while. In a few instances, it continues upward. It continues upward until my rational mind dissipates, and I start ranting and raving, making irrational and potentially destructive choices in my life. Choices that have (or could have) affected the course of my life.
I suffer from a small subset of the condition, Bipolar I. What differentiates this group from the standard “manic-depressive” or Bipolar diagnosis is that is more MANIC-depressive, with a sustained emphasis on the manic episodes. Depressive episodes occur, don’t get me wrong; but it is the intense and unstoppable mania that has shaped me more than the depression.
However, this condition is not “curable” in the standard way. It also doesn’t manifest any physical symptoms. So in most cases, people just say that I need to get a grip and get on with my life. I am grateful that I have an understanding and (in some cases) forgiving wife who is intent on helping me control and regulate my behaviour. I am also extremely lucky that my current manager understands this part of me, and gives me the freedom I need to ebb and flow with the condition.
To wrap this up (I hate long postings), I leave you with this thought. In his programme, Fry asks his interview subjects the following question (and I paraphrase it here):
If there was a button you could push, a button that cured you of this condition, and gave you a normal mind, would you press it?
Only one of the interview subjects said yes. Everyone else said that despite the pain and suffering that accompanies the condition, there is no way that they would be willing to give back the state of mind that allowed them to achieve what they had achieved.
We are not in our right mind. And I am proud of that.
Technorati Tags: Bipolar, manic+depression, manic+depressive, Bipolar+I, psychiatric+illness, mental+health, depression, mania, manic
Homeland Stupidity is great and reminding us that the security and intelligence community in the United States is insecure and of questionable intelligence.
The military intelligence unit responsible for spying on Americans had to evacuate its Fort Meade, Md., offices Friday after a six-alarm fire broke out.
A fire broke out shortly after 3 p.m. on the roof of Nathan Hale Hall, at 4554 Llewellyn Ave., just on the other side of the golf course from the National Security Agency headquarters. Construction was underway on the part of the roof that caught fire, according to Lt. Col. James Peterson, director of emergency services at Fort Meade.
A fire is unfortunate, and yes, it occurred in a building with sensitive “intelligence” material. However, isn’t this quote from later in the post a bit odd?
Jennifer Downing, a spokesman for the post, would only confirm a fire was burning at 4554 Llewellyn Ave., deep inside the west county Army base. She directed calls to a spokesman with the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, who did not return calls.
Fort Meade’s fire chief also did not return calls for comment. And later, a public affairs officer told The Capital to file a Freedom of Information Act request. — Annapolis Capital
Ummm….
“Dude, I can see flames coming from your offices.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny that my hair and clothes are on fire. Excuse me, I must participate in the screaming in pain and running madly away from the fire exercise.”
Kevin Tillman, the brother of the late Pat Tillman, has written an essay that will make it hard for anyone to justify Iraq.
How can the Rumsfeld, Rice, Cheney, Rove, and Bush argue their way out of this essay?
Remember, the Gettysburg Address took less than 2 minutes to deliver.
Pass it on.
Traveling Journal Kit – contents
Originally uploaded by junquegrrl.
Ummm…and I thought I had a problem!
Either I have lost my mind or the building has become truly evil.
Today, the air in my office is saturated with the small you can only find in an airplane bathroom.
You all know the smell. It is one of the most unique shared experiences humans can have.
It’s evil. And it’s everywhere.
Well, the irony of this is painful.
I went with 1&1 as the hosting location for my personal domains, including WebPerformance.org.
One of the things that I preach there is the use of compression.
Guess what? 1&1 doesn’t use Web compression on their servers.
Ugh.
Port80 Software is reporting that in their survey of Fortune 1000 Web sites, IIS 6.0 has overtaken Apache as the Web server platform of choice. [here]
My two-cents: I respect the Port80 Software team greatly and love their maniacal devotion to ensuring that IIS users actually make use of the HTTP compression and caching that can so greatly improve Web performance.
That said, they are tied to Microsoft and the IIS platform. I would be curious to see if, scratching below the surface, they were able to determine what the application platform these companies built their mission critical Web applications on. I am open-minded and willing to hear that IIS is winning in that area as well. In my mind, it’s about Web performance tuning, not what you use to get that performance.
That said, I think a critical Web application survey of these same firms would find that many of these companies rely on JSP servers to run their core business processes.
As well, it would be interesting to se, by Fortune 1000 ranking, what the companies are using what server platform.
And…people still use Netscape Enterprise, SunOne, and Domino as production Web servers? YIKES!
As a teenager growing up in a very small logging town in the BC interior, I had what could be politely termed unusual musical tastes, especially for the mainstream, heavy-metal, hair-banging kids I hung around with.
But when I was alone with my walkman, I listened to the real geniuses of 80s rock: REM, Kate Bush, Talking Heads, and…Lindsey Buckingham.
Lindsey Buckingham?? That guy from Fleetwood Mac?
Want a little aural treat? Listen to Go Insane. I literally wore the oxide off my version of the cassette. Crosses so many different boundaries…and realize that you are pretty much hearing Lindsey Buckingham only. Mick Fleetwood makes a couple appearances, but other than that, it is a one-man show.
Do it. I dare you.