Category Archives: dad

NY Review of Books piece on blogging

Posted on February 3, 2008 by bipolarlawyercook| 15 Comments

In case you’re feel­ing all meta and socio-cultural-analytical, a link to a dis­cus­sion of the ori­gins of, rea­sons for, and evo­lu­tion of blog­ging and its impact on our cul­ture. Thanks, Dad.

There’s much food for thought in this arti­cle, par­tic­u­larly the idea that blogs allows us to assume what­ever iden­tity we want– be it a wholly imag­ined, wholly ide­al­ized, or wholly uncon­strained ver­sion of our­selves. One thing I think the author misses is that “linky love” isn’t always for the link whores. As I said before, I think there’s a lot of desire to find a com­mu­nity out there– only some of it is ego-driven. The rest, I truly believe, is founded in a gen­uine desire to know others.

The other thing that inter­ests me about the arti­cle is this paragraph:

“Blog­gers assume that if you’re read­ing them, you’re one of their friends, or at least in on the gos­sip, the joke, or the names they drop.… Blog­gers breeze through places, peo­ple, texts, and blogs that you might or might not know with­out pro­vid­ing any help­ful iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. They fig­ure that even if they don’t pro­vide you with links you can get all the back­ground you need by Googling unfa­mil­iar terms, click­ing through Wikipedia (the col­lab­o­ra­tive on-line ency­clo­pe­dia) or search­ing their blog’s archives. The very tone of most blogs—reactive, punchy, con­ver­sa­tional, know­ing, and free-associative—is pred­i­cated on link­i­ness and infused with it.”

It’s true, in a lot of ways, and is part of the desire for com­mu­nity, and the won­der­ful result of know­ing you’ve suc­ceeded and there are reg­u­lar read­ers who want to share. But there are two impor­tant points under­ly­ing this, which are: to what extent are the insider jokes off-putting to new read­ers, look­ing for an “open” com­mu­nity to join, and sec­ond, to what extent does pro­longed use of this insider style stunt our writ­ing, and our per­spec­tive on the www and the whole wide (real) world?

As to the first– I have most def­i­nitely stopped vis­it­ing sites where it was impos­si­ble to catch up on the lingo, or the author never acknowl­edged my pres­ence ever, over sev­eral months, or it was impos­si­ble to pen­e­trate the back and forth in com­ment win­dows. On the sec­ond– to what extent have I allowed my writ­ing skills, my for­mal train­ing from law school, to slide, com­forted in the knowl­edge that “my” read­ers will for­give me a typo or gram­mat­i­cal error, a fail­ure of proper attri­bu­tion? It’s one thing to adopt a less for­mal tone, but I’ve got to think more about my com­fort level as to infor­mal con­tent– because there’s infor­mal, and then there’s sloppy and improper.

OK, navel gaz­ing for the day is over. You may go watch the Stu­pid­bowl, or what­ever it’s called, now.

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Posted in books, dad, links, meta

“Just” sensitive?

Posted on January 21, 2008 by bipolarlawyercook| Leave a comment

NYJLM had a post about what an impact the fear of being told “no” can have, and it was some­thing that really res­onated with me. I lived much of my child­hood try­ing to be good enough, smart enough, quiet enough, help­ful enough that my par­ents would give me praise, and rec­og­nize that their fight­ing was hurt­ing me. In my imag­i­na­tion, being good would inspire them to stop being so angry, and to start being civil. It would inspire my father to stop drink­ing, and my mother to start work­ing. It never worked out that way.

At the same time, I would cringe and try to hide when they were yelling at each other, on the phone or in per­son. When my father would be yelling back and forth with my grand­mother, again I’d curl into myself. I’d read my books, try to lose myself in the world the author had cre­ated– because any­thing was bet­ter than here. (Look­ing back, I can now see that my dis­taste for con­tem­po­rary fic­tion was likely born of a wish to avoid read­ing about sit­u­a­tions I faced in my real life.) I’d get anx­ious when­ever I was charged with telling the other some­thing that I knew was going to gar­ner an out­burst, or some neg­a­tive reac­tion. Never against me, but in my pres­ence, at the other par­ent. (I don’t care how old they are– never, ever bitch about the other par­ent in front of your child). I’d sweat, get shaky, get the tin­gles on my neck and arms, start to hyper­ven­ti­late. It didn’t take long until hav­ing to give any bad news of any stripe caused this reac­tion, which would last all through the deliv­ery of the news.

Soon, I began to dread any sit­u­a­tion that might result in a neg­a­tive out­come that I’d have to tell my par­ents about. Geom­e­try, a sub­ject that didn’t come nat­u­rally to me, became a source of night­mares and cry­ing jags before school. I got so I don’t think I could ever have learned it– I’d got­ten so worked up about hav­ing to do it at all that I couldn’t think straight when faced with proofs and angles. Any test or paper in any sub­ject would cause me anx­i­ety, even though I usu­ally got As and A+s. I needed “men­tal health” days because I would just get too anx­ious every few months to be able to school and func­tion that day.

At the same time, I was prone to depres­sion. I was a fat kid, and had a hard time mak­ing more than a hand­ful of friends up to high school. I was lonely, too, because even in the accel­er­ated pro­gram, I was far smarter than my peers, and couldn’t talk with them about the meta­phys­i­cal and sci­en­tific inquiries rolling around inside my head, along­side my sad­ness and inchoate anx­i­ety. I got a bit stalk­ery with some boys I’d dated, fol­lowed by months of bad poetic jour­nal entries and evenings of heartrend­ing sob ses­sions. But I grad­u­ated as Vale­dic­to­rian, wasn’t obvi­ously doing drugs, and hadn’t got­ten preg­nant, so when I tried to talk to my par­ents about what was wrong with me, they told me “You’re just sen­si­tive. Try not to take it so hard.” It wasn’t that they didn’t care– they did. But they didn’t under­stand what I was telling them I was feel­ing, and they had their own issues to deal with.

Thank good­ness for the sev­eral teach­ers I had in ele­men­tary, junior high, and high school who gave me their under­stand­ing and sym­pa­thy after school and between classes. There wasn’t a lot they could do to help with the fam­ily sit­u­a­tion, since I was clearly being fed, clothed, and forced to wash behind my ears, while not being vis­i­bly beaten, but they could answer my intel­lec­tual ques­tions, give me extra read­ing to do, and hand me tis­sues when I was feel­ing par­tic­u­larly wounded by some­thing some­one in my fam­ily or at school had done or failed to do. One teacher in par­tic­u­lar, Mr. O’Connell, made me feel like there would be a point, some­time, when I wouldn’t feel so lonely, when I would feel like I was among peo­ple who under­stood me and felt the same way I did, and was always avail­able to lis­ten to a moody adolescent’s lat­est emo­tional bruis­ing. Even into high school, there was always a chair in Mr. O’Connell’s office where I could sit and take refuge for a lit­tle bit. In his office, I was never “tak­ing it too hard.” Instead, I deserved sym­pa­thy, and was allowed to say how I felt with­out being told that I sim­ply had to get over it.

It would take sev­eral inter­me­di­ate break­downs in col­lege and then a suc­cess­ful cou­ple of years in law school and the grad­ual decline after until 2005, before some­one would tell me that I wasn’t “just sen­si­tive,” and would show me that there was some­thing I could do about how I was feel­ing, but dur­ing all that time, one of the things that got me through was the knowl­edge that there were some peo­ple who knew I wasn’t “just sen­si­tive,” but who thought I was spe­cial nonethe­less. I spent some time try­ing to find an email address or tele­phone num­ber, but have come up short, so far. So thank you, Mr. O’Connell, for never being some­one who I was afraid would say no.

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Posted in Deep Thoughts, bipolar, dad, links, memory, mom

Notes to Self

Posted on January 15, 2008 by bipolarlawyercook| Leave a comment

Dear Self:

You were ask­ing me how I was doing the other day, with this whole bipo­lar thing and the whole meds thing and the job thing and the mom thing. I thought it’d be nice if we made a date to sit down and just see where things stand.

So, how you doing? How you feel­ing? How’s the Bet­ter Half doing with all of this?

Lots of love,

Me

Hey, Me:

I’m OK, although I feel like I am rid­ing the dip­pi­est but shal­low­est roller coaster right now. The meds thing? I don’t feel bright eyed and bushy-tailed yet, but I am not cata­ton­i­cally depressed, either. I think I’m feel­ing a lit­tle more blue from the step down on the Effexor a week or so ago (you’ll recall I was start­ing to get a lit­tle hypo­manic, all irri­tated, angry, and unable to pay atten­tion), but that could be due to the uncer­tainty about my job sit­u­a­tion, too. I also know I am depressed because I freeze up a lit­tle when the phone rings– I just don’t feel like going out or talk­ing to any­one, some days. But then the next day, I feel OK, and send emails, and return calls, and have lunch and do things with friends. And then, the next day, I’m pooped, and need to hide from the world a bit more. See what I meant about the short and dippy rollercoaster?

I know I’ve still got a bit to go on the meds, as I work away on this 1200 mg dose of litho­bid CR and 75 mg Effexor XR. I had a wash of anx­i­ety the other day, seem­ingly out of nowhere, while I was read­ing an email from an Inter­friend with a really cool, really excit­ing, really scary offer. And despite mostly sit­ting on my ass doing noth­ing writ­ing and research­ing var­i­ous pieces I am writ­ing for on and offline, includ­ing work­ing on my mater­nal bitch­fest book, I am still exhausted when I go to bed, and sleep much longer in the morn­ings than is usual for me. So I could def­i­nitely stand to have a higher dose. The trou­ble with the lithium is that you have to titrate so slowly, given the risks of tox­i­c­ity if not care­fully man­aged, and I feel like I am mea­sur­ing my mood improve­ments in incre­ments of Geo­logic time.

Me, I am try­ing to focus on the glacial improve­ments– sleep­ing through most of the night, and only being awake for one insom­niac period, invari­ably at 3 am. (Hello, West Coast mid­night blog­gers! Thanks for the Google Chats!) Not wish­ing I was dead, or other pas­sive ideation. Being able to get out of bed in the morn­ing, hav­ing lost the “pinned to the bed” side effect of Lam­ic­tal. Laugh­ing at things. Still feel­ing cre­ative, and hav­ing lots of things to write.

But then there’s a short dip down– my thoughts are hard to orga­nize, and I feel like I have ADD all the time. It’s not some­thing that’s been a char­ac­ter­is­tic of my prior depres­sions, so it’s got to be the lithium. I am hop­ing it’s an imper­ma­nent side effect. It’d be impos­si­ble to go back to work and not be able to keep track of any­thing. “Excuse me a sec­ond, your honor, while I write down this next thought so that I can then say it out loud…” Not good. At the same time, there were three jobs I’d be really good at in the local legal paper yes­ter­day, and I know one of the hir­ing peo­ple. Since those jobs wouldn’t require me to man­age indi­vid­ual cases, they might be bet­ter for the way my brain is work­ing these days. Over the course of the day, if I write stuff down, I can get it down, and can remem­ber to go look at my lists, but I am start­ing to worry that this expan­sion of men­tal pro­cess­ing time is permanent.

At the same time, though, it doesn’t seem to impact my being able to write. I’ve got a list of about 15 things that I am work­ing on, aside from my attempt to affix blame where blame is due, rather than just get over it book, and new ideas for writ­ing pieces and photo projects all the time. The sit­ting around the house part doesn’t help, though, and I get dis­tracted and check the web. I’ve got to get bet­ter about going to work at the cof­fee shop around the cor­ner, or the local library branch, and just com­mit­ting to a chunk of unin­ter­rupted time. I’ve got that alarm clock on my com­puter, I can work 2 whole hours at a stretch.

And the mom thing? I don’t know. She’s got her doctor’s appoint­ment. We’ll see if she keeps it. Nei­ther my brother nor I want to move her back here, but we’re both con­cerned that even if we hook her up with a Dept. of Men­tal Health case­worker, she will either be non­com­pli­ant, or her bipo­lar will turn out to just be hard to man­age or treat­ment resis­tant. Nei­ther one of us wants her back here. Respect­ing her inde­pen­dence aside, I know that hav­ing her here will just invite me toward elder abuse. (Yeah, I know, I remem­ber that talk we had about my hor­ri­ble tem­per.) But let­ting her run around in Cali unsta­bi­lized and at risk of spend­ing all her money isn’t ten­able, either.

Thank heav­ens for the Bet­ter Half, who has been patient, and lov­ing, and under­stand­ing, and gen­tly nudg­ing me to do things I know I enjoy. Me, I’ve been an anx­ious, ner­vous wreck. When the job sit­u­a­tion started act­ing up, I couldn’t help but tell him I was afraid he’d leave me. I some­times still am– all those deep inse­cu­ri­ties from hav­ing to par­ent myself and my brother and my mother, and avoid the wrath of my father run deep– but he’s been noth­ing but reas­sur­ing. I have a nearly dis­as­so­cia­tive block when it comes to talk­ing about money, and so does he. I hate to put this on him right now, but he’s being a champ.

So… any more ques­tions? I am a lit­tle down, a lit­tle level, a lit­tle wor­ried, a lit­tle happy. A lit­tle bit of every­thing. Which, I sup­pose, is bet­ter from all angles than feel­ing like a big lump of noth­ing under the cov­ers. So there’s that.

Love and love,

Self

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Posted in Better Half, bipolar, dad, meds, mom

Whole lotta cookin’ goin’ on

Posted on December 26, 2007 by bipolarlawyercook| Leave a comment

I swear, I’ve got pic­tures of what I made for Christ­mas, I do! But first, I had some other cook­ing to do.

FRIDAY:
Our friends A. and P. came over, A. arriv­ing almost an hour early. She was on the phone with P. as he was call­ing me, at the T sta­tion down the street. “Send her over” I said– espe­cially since there’d been a before-school stab­bing the week before. We had a bot­tle of cava (peo­ple need to drink more sparkling wine… I’m try­ing to do my part) before din­ner and Amanda Hesser’s white bolog­nese sauce over polenta. (Note to self: fine grained polenta cooks a lot faster, and swells up a lot big­ger than medium grain. Don’t use so much next time.) We then had Martha Stewart’s Gin­ger­bread Ice­box Cake for dessert– we cheated, in that I did not make my own gin­ger­bread cook­ies, but instead bought some Swedish gin­ger­bread thins instead. Peo­ple, this dessert is genius– put six cook­ies in a cir­cle, put one in the mid­dle, glop on lots of sweet­ened whipped cream, repeat until you’ve used up two boxes of cook­ies. I didn’t make the com­pote, either, but next time, I may make some kind of hot fruit saute to go on the side. Maybe some­thing with pears or apples.

SATURDAY:
My Dad’s 65th birth­day. Since we were hav­ing Christ­mas at his house, we had his din­ner at mine. Dessert was a no-brainer– the Bet­ter Half made the Choco­late Arma­gnac cake, and my dad brought rasp­berry ice cream (home made, thank you) to go along­side. And, because it’s a fam­ily tra­di­tion, we also had Brigham’s Pep­per­mint Stick Ice Cream. For the din­ner part, we had a romaine salad with shaved fen­nel, tan­ger­ine supremes, pome­gran­ate seeds, and dressed with salt & pep­per, red wine vine­gar, tan­ger­ine juice, and olive oil. I served jew­eled bas­mati rice (chopped up dates & dried apri­cots with cur­rants and white raisins, chopped almonds, sauteed in but­ter and then added to bas­mati rice in the last 10 min­utes of its cook­ing) to go along with this Iraqi Lamb and Egg­plant stew recipe I saw in November’s Food and Wine. The recipe calls for lamb shanks, some­thing I stew at least sev­eral times a win­ter, and split yel­low peas, as well as the secret ingre­di­ent– a half a cup of pome­gran­ate molasses. It was deli­cious, and I usu­ally hate egg­plant, so that’s say­ing some­thing. I did gild the lily beyond the fresh cilantro gar­nish, how­ever– I had peeled and seeded a pome­gran­ate, and sprin­kled the top of the stew lib­er­ally with the seeds– so that each bite was hot, cold, fatty, rich, fresh, and tart. My brother and his Lovely Fiancee both had sec­onds, as did my dad.

Sun­day, we gave in and ate out around the cor­ner, at our Win­ches­ter. And on Christ­mas Eve, we had our own lit­tle fam­ily tra­di­tion in the mak­ing– a large pizza and a bot­tle of red wine. I also spent much time bemus­edly admir­ing my fin­ger– and toe-nails, which I got painted dur­ing my birth­day present out­ing with my brother’s Lovely Fiancee– I was going to get a nude-ish color, but she insisted on some­thing darker, so I went with OPI’s “I’m not really a wait­ress” red. It’s like I have pome­gran­ate seeds sparkling at the ends of my limbs. So not me. But very, very fun. And sur­pris­ingly attrac­tive on my super-short nails. I may have a new bud­get item.

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Posted in Better Half, Pantry cooking, cooking, dad, food, friends, links, recipes

The Christmas thing

Posted on December 24, 2007 by bipolarlawyercook| Leave a comment

I’m not a reg­u­lar church-goer– I’m aller­gic to orga­nized, hier­ar­chi­cal attempts at spir­i­tu­al­ity. But I was raised to attend church every Sun­day, and by and large, the churches I attended were not too bad when it comes to the human fail­ings of any orga­nized reli­gious group. When I do go to church now, it tends to be Quaker meet­ing, or a spe­cial visit on Easter or at Christ­mas time when I feel the need to sing the hymns and hear the read­ings. But gen­er­ally, the way in which so many peo­ple get the cen­tral mes­sage of Chris­tian­ity so very, very wrong just makes me sick, and keeps me away from church most of the time.

Last week I got my Christ­mas church on– my dad and I went to the carol ser­vice at Har­vard. I go every year, if at all pos­si­ble, and always have. Like­wise for when I was in col­lege– they put on a lovely carol ser­vice at my alma mater, and I’d get chills singing “O Come O Come Emmanuel.” The thing that is so nice about a carol ser­vice is that there is no ser­mon– just hymns and the read­ings– the prophe­cies in Isiah of Christ’s com­ing (“Won­der­ful, Coun­selor … Prince of Peace”), and the story of the mes­sage to Mary and the birth of Christ through the gathering-in of the shep­herds and the Wise Men– the Luke and Matthew ver­sions, usu­ally. I get to sing my favorite hymns, includ­ing the Latin ver­sions, in a standing-room-only church full of peo­ple who know how to sing, who know all the words, and who usu­ally under­stand Christ’s cen­tral mes­sage pretty well.

Every­thing else aside, whether you are a Chris­t­ian or not, I wish you the gift of know­ing and feel­ing what I think Christ­mas is really about– that peo­ple from hum­ble begin­nings can go on to do great things; that peo­ple who are “only human” are capa­ble of incred­i­ble sac­ri­fices for their fel­low men; that all the men with whom we share our planet are wor­thy of our time and our fel­low­ship, even if they are pros­ti­tutes, or lep­ers, or tax col­lec­tors; that no man is so great that he can­not hum­ble him­self to do a ser­vice for a hum­bler man; that we should do our best to for­give; that we should do our best to regret the wrongs we’ve done to oth­ers, and; that we should act, first and always, from love.

Wish­ing you a Christ­mas, a New Year, a life full of love, for­give­ness, and fel­low­ship. Thank you for all the love and fel­low­ship you’ve given me this year.

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Posted in Deep Thoughts, dad, good things