Friday Conversations With My Psychiatrist | January 9, 2009

Posted on January 23, 2009 by Gabriel...

There’s a certain rhythm to our appointments which gets broken after we’ve had a break. Even missing one appointment throws our timing off and we end up spending the first forty-five minutes catching up and talking about stuff we’re both interested in, then for the last fifteen I end up rushing through all the things I can remember wanting to talk about.

The break this time, of course, was Christmas and New Year’s. We talked a little bit about how 2008 ended up being a pretty successful year for me, but only at the end. Getting the diabetes under control, for example.

We didn’t discuss this, but in terms of relationships last year was not a good year. I actually became more isolated as the year went on… which, I think, was partially me reacting to all the bad medical news I was getting during the first half of the year.

Something we did discuss was cult behaviour, specifically the behaviour of the cult I grew up in compared to other media savvy cults operating today.

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Posted in Appointment Day, Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Clinical Depression, crazy people with no pants, Health, Manic Depression, Psychiatry | 7 Comments

How To Protect Yourself From The People Who Want To Find You

Posted on January 20, 2009 by Gabriel...

“Most people who have come recently to the web, say within the last two or three years, have no clue what the Internet is and what it’s capabilities are. Especially if they stay in their little chosen boxes. Four easy steps and they have a blog and a Twitter account and a MySpace page and maybe a Facebook profile… well two easy steps and someone with $10 and access to the [online] Yellow Pages can find out how much you paid for your house.”
Part of a comment I left on my post… “Tweet Tweet I Want To Kill Your Children LOL”; Jan. 7, 2009.

Since I was thirteen I’ve been a stone picker, farm hand, hunting guide, street punk, daycare manager, bouncer, large-installation landscaper, photographer, award-winning newspaper columnist and reporter — mostly I covered Internet Privacy Issues.
From my About Page.

Welcome to the Internet. The kindergarten without supervisors.
Comment someone left in a forum.

There’s an assumption of privacy people have when using the Internet which has no foundation in reality. That who we are is kept secret from others by virtue of an invisible shield of civility and fair play.

But the Internet, despite the hype, is not some Neverland where the rules of nature don’t apply.

Ask Thordora, who recently had the police knock on her door because someone in another country misinterpreted the twenty words Thor wrote on her own Twitter account.

Very real people can get really pissed off and motivated by what you have to say… or, more likely, at how they interpret what you say. And, if you don’t know what you’re doing, they can find you.

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, crazy people with no pants, Health, Manic Depression, Privacy Issues, Punk, Technology | 22 Comments

No Post Day | Rescue Challenge

Posted on January 16, 2009 by Gabriel...


There’s a YouTube here of The Bellamy Brothers. If you can’t see it please
reload, then contact Google and tell them to stop being evil.

This No Post day is a little different… instead of me asking questions this is more of a request to help other bloggers who might not even know they need some.

I keep a fairly large number of blogs in my public and private blogrolls which have been abruptly abandoned (see blogroll: 999 M.I.A.), and I like to occasionally check on them just to see if there has been any recent updates or signs of life.

I found a blog in my private blogroll a few nights ago — Fluffy Pink Clouds — I hadn’t been to in quite a few months. When I did visit, the last entry was dated December 1, 2008, and was a not very subtle threat of suicide.

When I find a blog kept by someone trying to recover from a mental illness who is having difficulties, I try to leave a few links to blogs I believe could help them, along with a few words of support. FPC had difficulties with depression and self-harm, for example, so I left links to Patient Anonymous and Seaneen.

I’m still not sure how responsible we’re supposed to be for each other, or how far that responsibility should extend. I’ve written before about our collective responsibility to each other, but only after we’ve taken care of ourselves.

So what I’m requesting on this strangest of No Post Days is for whoever is interested in participating to go through their blogroll this weekend and see if anyone needs a little help.

I don’t think this should be restricted to people we have a previous relationship with… so if you’ve got a short blogroll, use someone else’s.

Drop a link to a cool or funny video, maybe to something like the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, or to a site which helped you, and maybe to a blog kept by someone who has dealt with similar problems. And a few words of support. If you want to do it anonymously, just log out of your WordPress account.

Just find someone who is having a hard time and let them know they’re not alone.

.

...thanks.

.

Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, crazy people with no pants, Health, No Post Day | 5 Comments

Symptoms Probably Symptomatic Of Nothing And Some Links You Need To Blog Safely

Posted on January 14, 2009 by Gabriel...

I feel like I have a head injury. I think it’s from lack of sleep. For the past ten days there’s been an intermittent soft throbbing on the right side of my thinking tool, and a general pressure everywhere else.

If I could think properly I’d blame it on Christmas.

The Christmas season always messes with my sleeping patterns. One or two events a week I can handle, but constantly having to be somewhere and then somewhere else six hours later drains my energy levels to the point where I start talking about energy levels.

It always seems like Christmas punches a three week hole into whatever routine I’ve built up to that point, which somehow carries on afterwards… even if I manage to almost catch up. I missed a couple of recycling days around Christmas, then basically got caught up and yet now I’ve got almost three weeks of recycling on my kitchen floor.

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Posted in Bipolar, Christmas, crazy people with no pants, Health, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Privacy Issues | 13 Comments

Old Post Day | kicking at the darkness

Posted on January 7, 2009 by Gabriel...

This is something I’ve been planning for a few months. The basic problem with blogs is the more you write, the more gets left behind in the archives. So a few times a month I’m going to leave excerpts from my original posts which I think can really help people who are just starting out on their recovery, then link them to the original so maybe someone can also find something useful in the original discussions.

For this inaugural Old Post Day I’ve chosen one of the very first pieces I ever wrote about manic depression, it was originally posted on November 18, 2006. The title is a line from “Lovers In A Dangerous Time”, a song by Bruce Cockburn…

“kicking at the darkness until it bleeds daylight”

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, crazy people with no pants, Health, Manic Depression, Old Post Day | 8 Comments

Tweet Tweet I Want To Kill Your Children LOL

Posted on January 6, 2009 by Gabriel...

There’s almost a wilful blindness when it comes to the Internet and the technology surrounding it.

Of course most people don’t even understand that their name, address and phone number are stored and available for free online in an easily searchable format. If you’re in the phonebook, your numbers are on the web.
“Killing Time With Tech And The Things You Really Need To Know About Your Online Privacy”, Me; May 28, 2008.

I just had to prove that my fucking daughter was all right because some “person” who has never met me, barely exchanged any words with me, couldn’t stop for a minute and think, gee, perhaps she’s like many other mothers, annoyed at bedtime. She couldn’t stop and think, hmmm, an email might suffice.
“Watch what you twitter, big sister is watching.”; Thordora

“if I smother my 3 year old, who will NOT GO TO FUCKING SLEEP, is it REALLY a crime?”
The “tweet” in question. Notice the punctuation and question with an obvious answer, and the word “if”. At no time in this statement does Thordora threaten her children. It’s a type of humour called “absurdism” which makes an exaggerated claim to make a point about something else… Thordora is saying she is tired.

Absurdism: An act or instance of the ridiculous. “True absurdism is not less but more real than reality” (John Simon). A philosophy based on the belief that the universe is irrational and meaningless and that the search for order brings the individual into conflict with the universe. Distinctively Absurdist language will range from meaningless clichés to Vaudeville-style word play to meaningless nonsense.
Taken from merriam-webster.com, Answers.com and Wikipedia.

Tara Gerner-Ziegmont

Because of a misunderstanding on a social networking site a friend of mine had to explain to police she hadn’t harmed or killed her kids.

My friend, Thordora, posted a comment to her Twitter account. She was tired, fed up with her kids bedtime rituals and joked about “smothering” them.

After a series of convoluted events a woman named Tara, who lives in Pennsylvania, used “tweets” on her Twitter account to contact a complete stranger in Los Angeles, who somehow managed to convince the police near Thordora’s home there was imminent danger to Thor’s kids.

This is what happens when two strangers who are naive about the technology they’re using collide. Thor, for a minute, believed everyone reading her “tweet” would understand her. Tara thought it was her responsibility to get her Twitter “community” hard at work finding Thor — ultimately slandering Thor’s name up and down the Twitter world.

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Posted in Bipolar, crazy people with no pants, Health, Privacy Issues, Technology | 32 Comments