Recognize, Refrain, Relax and Resolve

Got home after my meds guy appointment around 5:30. My online chats were boring, so I went to the couch to play some Triple Town. When my game ended, I snuggled on into the cushions and fell asleep. When I woke up at 8:30 pm, I was overcome with a sense of embarrassment.

See, I'm being treated for bipolar disorder. I don't know if I've ever been officially diagnosed, even at this point, but I've been taking meds for the condition for the past 3+ years. The way I think of it is, the farther away I got from my last drink on April 5, 2009, the more time my brain's chemistry had a chance to go back to what it should have been—and what that is is seriously fucked up. So I'm on a large cocktail of meds.

I'm fine with the situation. I'm closely monitored by my meds guy, see him as often as once a month sometimes, and he tweaks and adds where needed. At one point he was actually going to start lowering the dosage on one, but at the same time some outside circumstances led to me cutting again. He quickly changed tactics, kept that one where it was, and popped me on another. The most recent change was slightly raising one of my nighttime meds when I was cycling pretty fast—one week up, one week down. That was a tough month. This month wasn't as bad. Will see him again in a month in October.

But what prompted me to speak up today was the feeling I had when I woke up from my nap. After a manic episode, I'm ashamed of how I behaved and talked and even thought. I want to hide in games and books and sleep and push all of it away and forget what happened.

One thing that accompanies an episode are epiphanies about my life, and I had a big one yesterday. A revelation of what I should do, in terms of work. Like, all these pieces from the past few months and even bits from years ago just clicked into place and aha! that's the answer I've been looking for. Then I ran around for 24 hours brimming over with ideas and happiness and inspiration. I talked the eyes off some of my online friends in chat rooms. I monopolized people's attentions on gchat windows. I had oodles of conversations in my head with fake people, real people, myself, my therapist, my parents, my meds guy before I saw him, all justifying myself and solidifying my ego into diamond-hardness in a whirlwind of thought—or letting the committees in my head take over, to use someone else's terminology. I listened to those committees and we held a huge convention in my head all day about how brilliant I am and how this is the ultimate solution. Most importantly, I know this will be a long and hard road, but I am up for it and willing to make the sacrifices to get there!

Then I woke up at 8:30 tonight and was like, really? Again?

Right now, at 9:30, I'm trying not to get down on myself. An important revelation among the host of them yesterday was that all of this is practice for my goal. Or, as one buddhist teacher once told me, "Every choice is a step along the path." If I don't bring anything else out of this mess of a manic episode—which I traditionally hide from for at least a week—I hope that I remember the connection I made between spiritual principles and professional behavior. For even just a few hours, I wasn't bearing down on myself as a failure, or that I must change everything! Right now! Ready, set, go! Now and forever! to be what I want to be. Everything is practice to get there: Being depressed and coming out of it and going back to work. Indulging escapism and shortening the time it takes me to get moving again. Even the choices that are "wrong" are right because they're teaching me lessons I need to incorporate. It's coming back to the path and exercising that muscle—or labeling the thoughts "thinking" and coming back to the breath.

Or like cheating on a diet and going right back to eating healthy. But that's another story for another time.

Question: Where are people posting these days?

I'm looking at my friends' page and seeing just a few people posting, and I haven't exactly been one of them. Where are people? Dreamwidth? Have people dispersed to blogging sites? Or is everyone at shudder Facebook and simply sharing media and one-liners?

I want to start posting more significant thoughts than mere brain bursts that none of my fb friends can relate to and thus never comment on, but no one seems to be around here. 

And it's not just my stuff I want to be seen, I also want to see my friends'. I miss darkeyedwolf's kdrama picspams, even though I never watched the shows. I miss others' tv commentary. Are they on other websites or just not being done anymore?

Right now I'm obsessing over The Vampire Diaries. I watched the first 3 seasons this past summer, over the course of half a Thursday, half a Friday, then a full Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Last Sunday I caught up on the fourth season's first 6 episodes which made me all about wanting to watch it again. I restrained myself for a couple of days by reading Television without Pity recaps but eventually gave in and threw myself into the first two seasons. The second season is far superior to the first. I remembered the third kind of sucked so when I was done with the second I went back to the first again.

I think Veronica Mars was my last big American fandom, which probably goes to show how long I've been out of the American show loop. Maybe it's me running in denial of how crappy my life is right now but I wanted to get as up on TVD episodes as I was on VM. I even printed out a list of episode titles so I could make kind of notes and figure out what went where. I didn't have a sense of the show but once I could see it visually could kind of see the little arcs, like the tomb vampires then Jonathan Gilbert. I'm not quite down with the episode titles but I'm getting there.

But what really got me on LJ today is realizing that my TVD obsession, particularly with Damon/Ian Somerhalder, doesn't go much farther than the show. In one of the third season recaps, the recapper linked out to the Ian Somerhalder Foundation which I looked at one pic on the homepage, and at the About, and quickly clicked out of the tab. I was, like, embarrassed to be looking at it. I don't want to see pics of him lying on the grass in regular Ian Somerhalder-life, I just want to love on Damon Salvatore-woobification. Although there have been some exceptions to this rule. I was browsing around Nina Dobrev's imdb forums and found out that a) she's dating Ian Somerhalder, and b) that she (and he) smokes cigarettes, to both of which I said GO THEM. And promptly lit up a cigarette of my own. There were a lot of posters who were all, ew, nasty habit, makes her so unattractive--but I love it when my actors smoke, to be honest.

And I did carry over some Damon love to Lost when I watched some of it over the summer. (I'm near the end of the fourth season and won't say I've given up on it but I'm giving it a very large break.) Ian Somerhalder was all tiny on Lost, and I did read that he put on 20 pounds of muscle so he could start getting lead roles, to which I'm quite grateful. But in first season when Jack was debating on how to amputate Boone's leg, I found myself getting really really upset over the maiming of my boy, that I had to forcefully remind myself that Ian Somerhalder is now on TVD and much hotter and in much better character. It wasn't Boone's ultimate death that upset me, just him getting his leg chopped off. 

My involvement with fandom is more on an individual level. I'll read biographical bits on imdb, like the trivia on movies. I don't seek out fan pages and fan sightings or fan fiction of the characters. The TWOP recapper talks about the forums a lot and people getting over-invested in hating on characters or in one side of the love triangle--and I won't even go there to watch it. They're so fast and furious with their spoutings that it's overwhelming, or so I think because I've never actually gone there. But maybe I'm just not that passionate or feel as much need to involve others in my fannish ways.

Which is a little odd that I do want to talk to some of my friends about the shows I'm watching. I'll just tell little tidbits to friends in passing, though, mostly if I'm totally hung up on a scene or a comment from a recap I find particularly funny. I complain sometimes about not having friends to talk about my shows with but won't venture out into forums and fandoms I know are there on the internet. I feel like they go places I don't really want to, when really I'm happy within my own little world of fantasy and, in this case, Damon-love.

I don't know which is worse: Lost in Austen or Mr. Darcy's Diary.

And considering I didn't think anything could get any worse than Lost in Austen, I'm going through some hell here.

But I bought it! So I'm determined to finish it.

Tell me the scariest book ever. I want a book that is going to terrify me and I won't be able to sleep for weeks.

Barring that, just recommend some horror for me. I'm so bored with everything I've been reading.

1. One thing I really love about my nook is having multiple books wherever I go. Right now I'm re-reading C.S. Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy and nearing the end of the second book. I'm going to a wedding shower today but I don't need to pack a second book in my bag because I've got the third book lined up! That's a gigantic relief to someone who can't leave her apartment without a book, and these days it's less difficult because of my iphone and eReader. I used to carry gigantic books around with me--now I have to use grad school as my excuse for all the crap I carry around.

2. Another thing about the nook is the comfort. No more needing to flip sides when I'm laying down or finding the right way to hold the book and flip pages. I can just set up the book and tap the side when I'm turning a page. I was worried about the page turn blink when I first got the nook and nearly returned it. I googled about people getting used to the page turn and someone's comment was "Takes less time than taking a Dorito out of the bag." HA. As other commenters assured, I don't even notice the process anymore.

3. Here's the main point of this disjointed post: I'm trying to figure out what happens when I go from reading words to falling into the story. I can never remember to identify the point, though. When I think about it too hard, I'm just reading words but when I let that go I'm in the story and that imagining that carries all readers away when we achieve it. You know that time? When does it happen? How does it happen? I'm sure people have done research but I can't begin to come up with search terms--and I'm supposed to be a master searcher at this point. (I will say I've gotten tons better, I don't do the tell of putting in the little words like "the" "is" "what" "why" that Ran Hock said professional searchers identify the beginners by; and that wasn't in the book, that was when he was looking over my shoulder and saw me doing it, ha.)

What switch is flipped when a book goes from words to story? Do some people do it while others don't, and is that why non-readers don't understand readers? One reason I love Stephen King is, for me, there's mostly no running start, no need to take a few words, I just sink right in. Is Stephen King some grand author? To some people he's a hack, but to me anyone who sucks me into a story like he does can be considered any disparaging epithet others assign to him. I love his books.

I guess I'll keep trying to figure out when and why my imagination takes off when I'm reading. I have an ex who loved watching me read because I'd jump or gasp or laugh. I'll flinch sometimes when I'm on the metro reading during my commute and occasionally garner a glance or two. And to be honest, I don't think I could be with someone who doesn't have that same appreciation for reading, and whom I can read with and be kept company.

(~575 words, and only 2 days late!)

It took me 6+ hours to write a two-page paper that clocked out at 501 words--including APA-style references. Because of this fact, I hereby resolve to start writing at least a post a week, starting with 250 words (minimum) and working my way up to where 500 words is a piece of cake. I remember last semester when my 500-word intel briefs took me hours and hours to write, too. This does not bode well for future student endeavors.

Not that anyone will particularly enjoy the posts, but they will be here. 

I spent all of Summer 2011 obsessing over Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood to the point where I was running eps while I cleaned my apartment as background noise. That's reaching Buffy proportions, and over a manga-adapted anime series with English dubs! Never thought I'd see the day I actually liked a dubbed version, usually anime sounds ridiculous in English. I'll admit the first episode was horrifying, though.

Now I'm rereading the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, basically for the hell of it. I also wanted to see how much Brotherhood stuck to the manga since the original anime series took a turn after the Elric brothers met Greed. I'm amazed at how close they run together, to the point of being a little bored since I watched the series so much. I don't like the translation in the anime of Sloth's "what a pain" from the "too much work" in the manga. I thought the "too much work" was far more fitting for the characterization. I'm a slothful person and I don't tend to say work is a pain so much as it takes too much effort to do anything. For the most part, though, I totally love the anime translation over the manga; the manga's translation isn't quite as biting as the anime scripts.

The biggest departure I've seen so far is the much longer story of the Ishbalan war in the manga. Riza's recollections takes up a whole volume where just part of one ep is in Brotherhood. The anime skipped Kimblee's honest admiration of the Rockbell doctors for staying on the war front to treat the injured. When Kimblee tells Winry at Briggs that he admired her parents, the exchange rings true (and creepy) in the manga where I thought he was bullshitting her in the anime.

I'm curious how the end matches up. The last volume of the manga was only recently published, and I watched the end of Brotherhood last year despite not reading it first.

Guess I'll get back to it.

Ok, I finally signed up for facebook today. 

In the "people you may know" section, two people who I haven't communicated with since the before time—in fact are two out of three of the Big Mistakes I made on my down—came up on the list. WHAT. THE. FUCK. I... have no idea.

Is it because those two people let facebook into their emails? But--I haven't emailed one of them in 3 and a half years. The other I don't think I EVER emailed.

This isn't creepy, it's traumatizing.

Tonight I'm going to Muzette, a "Karaoke Studio & Korean Restaurant." I suppose I'm the only one of the group who keeps flashing back to What Happened in Bali with the two chicks dancing around and "entertaining" the guys at the karaoke club. 

While a large part of me wants to burn that drama from my memory, I suppose any show that indelibly sticks with a viewer years after they see it does its job. Although that was the first drama where I liberally used the ff button and have utterly no regrets. All the scenes with chick's brother and them mooning around staring into space to the same song over and over went the way of the speedview.