What Is It Like to Have Bipolar Disorder?
Americans have a great fear of what we think bipolar disorder is. We imagine bipolar disorder means unpredictably violent, unreliable or irrational. We also misuse the term. I can't STAND it when someone calls going back and forth between strong opinions bipolar, as...
Cutting Carbs Like My Life Depends on It
Previous post on weight & health: Touched my nose to my knee! I recently had some blood work done. On September 11th, my doctor told me my blood sugar, cholesterol and triglycerides were high. I do NOT want diabetes, heart disease or any of the other health...
Gina Rodriguez
Gina Rodriguez This is what I've been waiting and planning for. A woman named Gina Rodriguez is poised to become a household name. She's an actress from Chicago, born to Puerto Rican parents, who plays the character Jane Villanueva in the new series Jane the Virgin. I...
Pants*
Previous post on weight & health: Cutting carbs like my life depends on it *In the United States, pants refers to the garment others call trousers. (A post in which I do nothing but whine.) I haven't allowed myself to buy pants in quite a...
National Suicide Prevention Day
Have you ever thought it would better if your life just ended now? If so, you know what I'm talking about. Does it absolutely baffle you that anyone would rather be dead than alive? If so, then please read one of the best things I've read about why people kill...
Blogging, Not Perfection
I went through the titles of all my blog posts (yes, every one) to tag the ones that are about my music, and realized that I've been taking my blog way too seriously. I used to post a few times a day, not a few times a month. And lately I've been posting mostly when I...
What Do They Do if You’re in a Coma?
No one who's in perfectly good health ever thinks they need to worry about ending up in the hospital tomorrow, but things happen. I'm sure you can think of people who were fine one day and then, in a moment, it all changed. They didn't think they needed to make known...
My Music
I wrote a bunch of songs between 1997 and 2007, but didn't put an album together until 2013 (with the mastering help of New York jazz pianist Robert Cowie). Each year that I get farther away from those songs I get less judgmental about my creativity. This means the...
I Wasn’t Wired Right
Why don't I fear what most others fear? Things like losing my job, being divorced or having others think badly of me? Because the boogie man is inside my head and I don't have enough fear for the stuff that's outside of me, too.
Ferguson, racism, etc.
Maybe the U.S. is reaching a crisis point at which things will have to change. Maybe not. You'd think police forces would learn that using military grade weapons and technology contributes to escalation of emotion and racial tensions, but they don't seem to be. It...
Depression Unhinges You from Reality
When you find out someone died of cancer, do you wonder how they could have hurt their loved ones by doing that? Do you suspect they took the coward's way out? Do you think, "But he had it all: money, marriage, great kids, a successful career. Why would someone like...
Welome Back, Period!
I recently stopped taking birth control after six years. I had started it only to control cramps because the pain of menstruation had gotten so bad, I was calling in sick. On birth control, I still got periods every month, but they became pain-free and asymptomatic. I...