10 Years of Contemplation

Rock Bottom

will — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:05:29 +0000

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Delusions

will — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:56:39 +0000

It’s been about a little over a month since I was hospitalized and I think I’m finally starting to get some perspective on what parts of my life experience were “crazy” and which weren’t.

I want to get to a point where I can integrate this period into my life story. I’ve been thinking about archetypes and how they may be able to help me in this endeavor.

In her book, Awakening the Heroes Within, Carol Pearson builds off the work of Jung and defines a growth model in terms of progression through three sets of archetypes:

Preparation:
- Innocent
- Orphan
- Warrior
- Caregiver
Journey:
- Seeker
- Destroyer
- Lover
- Caregiver
Return:
- Ruler
- Magician
- Sage
- Fool

Developmentally, the concept is you iterate through each of the three major stages with a dominant archetype at each point.

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To Ten and Back

will — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:31:34 +0000

I’m going to try counting my breaths in yoga using the following scheme:

1,1,1,2,2,1,1,2,3,3,2,1,…,1,…,10,10,…,1

How many breaths will I take in the course of one set?

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Orphan

will — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 02:30:13 +0000

Wayne heads out tomorrow. I’ve been thinking quite a bit about what my life is going to be like without him around. They say that having a close friend within a quarter mile of where you live raises your quality of life by 40%.

I’ve been lucky to have that with various peoples for almost the last ten years. This upcoming stint at Vanderbilt will represent my first break and I’m terrified of it.

I think my biggest worry is that I’ll find it irresistible to revert back to old patterns. I already find that when I’ve been sitting around for half an hour or so in the room I start to drift down toward the kitchen. I spent much of high school hiding from loneliness in food and ended up weighing well over 200lbs.

The solace I’m hoping to find is in writing. That always served me well in the past. Everything just seems so flat when I try to describe it. It makes sense given the stress in my life, but I fear how long it will last.

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Party Ben

will — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 18:28:34 +0000

New artist du jour Party Ben.

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Where’s My Grouphouse?

will — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 22:22:03 +0000

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UStream

will — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:53:35 +0000

I’ve been learning to use UStream. Initially my talking was pretty disjointed, I think this is getting more coherent. Any comments are more than welcome. Any passing along of the link is greatly appreciated.

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My American Dream

will — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 14:00:59 +0000

I’ve been needing to update for a while. My life for the longest time was about trying to make a change in the world and pursuing that by seeking abandon — freedom from concern about what others think.

I found it, but in complete isolation. For a week or so I moved into the castle in the sky I’ve been working on for the last year. I’ve been finding my way back for the three weeks subsequent and coming to terms with the choices I’ve made.

[…] Read the rest of My American Dream (315 words)

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What Kind Of Crazy Am I?

will — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 02:34:26 +0000

Life update: I'm two days back from a week at Woodridge in-patient mental health services. At the end of a longer story I'll tell later, I gave an interview to the on-call physician at JSMC from the perspective of a 19-year-old female rape victim who was remembering "Will Holcomb" as part of a psychotic break to avoid facing the loss of the baby she had been carrying.

I was unaware at the time the interview was cinching my involuntary committal — a sobering fact that might have held my tongue before the sentence, "This person helping / person being helped dynamic we're doing isn't really working for me, can you understand that?" left my lips.

My week of colorful characters ensnared in the ropes of mental patientry masked the symptoms of the Resperdal I've been taking as a "mood-stabalizer". I chalked being tired all the time up to the stress of being imprisoned for staring at my food (about midway through the longer tale).

Tonight I was cognisant enough of my responsibility to myself to not take the pill that makes my brain unpleasant to inhabit. Instead, I snuck into the night to medicate in a different fashion by burning one down and streaming my consciousness into a voice recorder for about 45 minutes.

I'm calling it Sample #1. I still think I'm in the learning phase, but I feel pretty good (not having listened to it yet). If nothing else, it's another learning experience. ☺

As to whether it is "crazy?" I'm willing to argue it is just an unusual, but defensible, version of sane, or it's / I'm at least trending enough in that direction to be allowed to make my own decisions about the chemicals I put in my body.

Sample #1 best viewed in Firefox.

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Letting Go

will — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 17:06:27 +0000

I have largely stopped writing because the person that I reveal when I write genuinely doesn’t fit with the image that I want to project of myself in the world.

One of my biggest fears is of being labeled as mentally unstable and being marginalized. I want to move beyond that. I want to let go of the image I am attempting to project — the person that I think I need to be in order to be content and happy.

It is difficult because I don’t have a concrete place to stand. Over the course of the last two years the grounding that I developed in undergrad and Peace Corps as to what I am good at, why I am valuable and interesting has been eroding.

I’m assuming that there’s a rebirth in store, but I’ve been primarily involved in the dying part. I am getting close to letting that go and being honest with the world about my ideas and plans is a necessary first step.

So far as crazy, there’s a simple place to start:

Holcomb for President 2016

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