Looking Forward...

I went to bed last night (well before the witching hour), plotting in my head the wise words I’d share today, the launch of a new year. I love the first day of a new year—it’s akin to shedding old clothes and wearing new, shiny togs. I was going to say something about a new year providing a new chance for hope, which led me to ponder what it was I hoped for. And of course, I hoped for calm and peace for my family, health and resilience for my children. But these are ‘things’ I can’t change, through persuasion or brute force; these are things I’m graced with, through luck or God or both.

I’ve said before I’m not one for resolutions, and I’m not, especially as I realize what I want most I can’t guarantee. But I can help shape peace and calm and health, and I can do this by living my best possible life. Two years ago, through necessity, I started to live my best possible life. Those of you who don’t know me but who might have met me at a conference or a grocery store would likely think to yourselves, “Jeesh, that woman, such a mess!” And I was a mess, but I was the best I could be at that time. Back then, there were days when getting myself on the metro to work was a triumph. Fear has a funny way of paralyzing me (maybe you, too?) but at some point something snapped in me and I got pissed off and decided to rub fear’s nose in my happiness. Which was feigned, but another funny thing is when you fake your joy and peace, it becomes a state of being.

As 2016 marches down its preordained road (and we get an extra day of joy this year), my game plan is to continue being the best possible me every second of this year. That means checking myself when I find impatience and frustration growing in my gut, approaching life as a listener rather than a talker, and establishing boundaries that provide the ability to be the best I can be. It also means forgiving myself when I screw up (and forgiving others when they do), because I (and others) will screw up—it’s part of our messy humanity. It means seeking daily balance in my physical, social, emotional, and spiritual needs, and keeping each well fed. Being the best possible me means having goals (not resolutions) and striving toward them. I want to tumble into my sheets each night feeling I accomplished much, have nothing to feel badly about, and knowing I did the best I could—and that I can do better.

So no expectations for dramatic change this year; merely paddling down the same creek in hopes the water and my work carve the earth ever deeper. What are your goals for this year? What paths are you hoping to meander down? 

Happy New Year, and peace...

Diagnosis du jour

Like changing hemlines, there are fashions in mental health. In the 1980s, taking Prozac was hip and, on the cocktail circuit, you were embarrassed if you weren’t taking the little blue and white capsule. A decade later, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was the ‘in’ condition, not just among children and adolescents, but also among driven adults. And now, in the new millennium, the diagnosis of the moment is bipolar disorder.

A new study conducted by researchers at Columbia University http://www.nimh.nih.gov/press/rates_bipolar_diagnosis.cfm?OututPrint) finds that 1 in every 100 youth aged 19 or younger has bipolar disorder (and 2 in every 100 adults). That may not sound so bad – just 1 percent – but taken in the context of trends, it is disturbing: the rate of bipolar diagnosis has increased forty-fold in ten years among adolescents.

Forty-fold.

What the hell’s in the water?

Probably nothing. Historically, bipolar disorder has been under-recognized, under-diagnosed, and under-treated, especially in pediatric populations. The mood swings, excess energy, and restlessness associated with bipolar parallel the signs and symptoms seen in other conditions, including ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, psychotic disorders, and garden-variety depression. Not to mention the normal angst and sturm of adolescence.

But now it appears we may be swinging to the other side of the pendulum: over-diagnosis. And a consequence of any diagnosis is usually a treatment. The medications used to treat bipolar disorder – lithium and other mood stabilizers, anxiolytics, antidepressants, and antipsychotics – are not innocuous. They are powerful, mind-altering drugs which, when used appropriately, confer tremendous medical benefit. But they also have potent and dangerous side effects, ranging from the inconvenient and uncomfortable (loss of libido, dry mouth, shaking) to the downright dangerous (blood dyscrasias, weight gain, diabetes).

In BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT, Ben is bipolar. Diagnosed at age 16, he’s a model patient, compliant with his lithium and psychotherapy for the past four years. But a series of events cascade and lead him to ‘forget’ his happy pills and he starts the upward spiral into mania…

My very atoms vibrate: from caffeine, from sleep deprivation, from the constant moving forward. From erratic consumption of my mood regulators. But my mind is sharp, focused; my dreams, Technicolor wonders. Everything I touch explodes from this magical, sub-cellular energy surging within me. When I press the closed hollow-wood door to Bruce’s office, it flies open with a bang. The knob gouges the plaster wall. He sits at his desk, the room dim but for the green glow of a single lamp, head down, not noticing my tumult.

Left Brain, Right Brain?

Which are you? Sinister or dexter? Lucky me, I'm both. The ambidexterity of my brain is both blessing and bane. Those two hemispheres constantly whir, night and day, buzzing through words and numbers, scales and poems, equations and paintings.

Anyone else face this dilemma? Where both sides compete for attention, the logical side waving, furious - get that analytic modeling finished, or else! - at the artistic side bending itself silly over a gluttony of words? A poem perchance, or a decent short or essay. Or, by gum, The GAN - Great American Novel. Which is what I'm working on now.

I'm a scientist, and a writer. In between, I do the mom thing and the wife thing and the partner-of-a-minister thing. It's a fun imbalance, a demanding one, but I wouldn't squander a minute of it, not even for a long weekend in a hammock with a good book and a pitcher of Mai Tais. Well, maybe if the vacation was all expenses paid, I might find time to swing down to Aruba.

Here I'll post about my writing life, with smidgeons of musings on science and other marvels thrown in. On how I get it all done. Or not. Usually not. Perhaps I'll be brave and share a snippet or two of poetry, or an excerpt from my novel BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT, which is closing in to the finish line. Meanwhile, I invite you to share your adventures in juggling science and writing and parenting and partnering and business and everything else that spins your world. Share your secrets on how YOU get it all done with a modicum of sanity and, perhaps, a tad of humor.

Peace, Linda