Reading "Touched with Fire"- Jamison
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Reading "Touched with Fire"- Jamison
| Thu, 02-08-2007 - 9:18am |
I just started "Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament" by Kay Redfield Jamison last night. Really enjoying it so far, although that "illness" in the made me a bit cross, as does the "disorder" in this board's title... while sometimes it's hard to deal with, overall I enjoy my mood swings lol. I'm really looking forward to reading more about Lord Byron.
Love and Light, Joelle
Homeschooling mom to an

This is new. I can honestly say that in fourteen some-odd years dealing with this illness, I have never heard anyone say they enjoy it (and I have read that book, especially liking the part about Robert Schumann.)
You know, I used to dream about being some Leonard Bernsteinesque orchestra conductor. Though bp was getting in the way of my training, I took heart in books like Touched With Fire pointing out so many people with great artistic gifts dealing with bipolar. I remember, my pdoc at the time shot me down by saying that just because people in that book were successful did not mean I would be successful. WAS THAT REALLY NECESSARY?! Kinda mean if you ask me.
I'll just be happy getting a full schedule of music students...
Express!
Beth "Petrouchka"
of course, I'm pretty much in a manic phase right now, mixed with occasional lamb-like bleats of depression. As I'm also struggling with my anorexia and my chronic back pain this week, I can't exactly point to where the overwhelming sadness has been coming from
You know, it's comments like your pdoc's that in part keep me from even bothering trying to see one. too often, I found people in such a position.
I've found my writing to be such a wonderful tool in controlling my moods. Sure, there's plenty of times I just happily ride along on a manic phase that could be labeled as dangerous because it's helping me produce lots of words (I'm an author), but normally when I am moving forward at a *happy* pace in my novel, my moods are fairly even. Those are the days when my husband doesn't complain about my personality shifts quite as often :D. I've started keeping a daily word count spreadsheet so I can try to compare my productivity a bit against my moods. I'm not sure how tight the connection is tho lol... one of my *best* days on word count recently (I wrote like 900 words) was also one of my worst depressed days recently
Love and Light, Joelle
Homeschooling mom to an
Love and Light, Joelle
Homeschooling mom to a 11yr old hydrogen molecule.
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