Well this past month and a half feels like it’s come and gone so quickly. For those of you who are new to my blog, I quit my job rather abruptly mid February due to safety and poor management reasons. I loved aspects of that job, but it was no longer productive for my mental health despite it being a mental health facility who prided itself on mental well being of staff and clients.

I got a job as shift supervisor at a local Starbucks in my area and I have already completed a background check and did onboarding so my official start date was March 25th, but my first day of work is April 1st. I am scheduled 23.5 hours for my first week of training and I should be doing two weeks of barista training and one week after that of supervisor training and by the end of April I will be in charge and on my own for closing shifts.

The other good news is that I am also starting what I hope will be my last quarter at community college. I am taking not three, not four, but five courses of 22 credits will allow me to graduate once I am successful and pass all five courses. I am taking Human Biology, Math in Society, Geologic Hazards, Intro to Science, and Health Science(2 credits). I didn’t even know until mid March that me graduating with an associates’ degree was even possible for me in a single quarter. Technically I should have broken up the course load and taken two quarters but I knew I wouldn’t complete a second quarter if I could help it and I have the ambition and drive to complete my final prerequisites for my degree.

So my first day of work and classes are both on Monday April 1st. I am going to be quite busy… But today is apparently world bipolar day because today was artist, Vincent Van Gogh’s birthday (March 30) and I am unsure if he is actually bipolar or was just thought to be bipolar, hence the occasion.

I’ll leave some quotes from my personal social media below:

“Dear Lord, please help me be the person my psychiatrist medicates me to be. Amen.”

“I should not have to reach crisis for you to believe my distress.”

“Even when I am in a really great, steady, and stable place… I’m clinically bipolar, so that always exists – a darkness always exists. –Mary Lambert”

…

In other news, I organized my room pretty good… so good in fact, I found weed edibles on my desk that was buried underneath mountains of to do lists and random scraps of paper I considered keeping because they were ‘worthwhile’. (They were not… most of them.)

I told my mom I found the edibles and I told her to dispose of it so it wouldn’t be a trigger for me. Not that I was really triggered in that moment, but I didn’t want to have that edible and me in a room alone together with crazy delusions going on in my head thinking that starting down that path again would be a good idea.

And like the great mother my mom truly is, she grabbed a half full can of wet cat food and opened up the package of edibles and put all the gummies in with the cat food and crushed it up to mix it in with the cat food can and threw it away and my dad took out the trash. I mean if I was that triggered it wouldn’t even be worth it to me to go through the trouble to grab that edible plus that’s some nastiness. Not that desperate, thank goodness.

Both of my desks and chairs are ready to go. I am finishing my last load of laundry. I have new sheets on my bed in addition to my new comforter. I will do my med box tonight for the upcoming week. All in all, it’s been a successful day. Didn’t relapse, found some older court documents that scared me back sober, I took a shower and shaved my legs. I am ready to take on the world.

But like the above quote says, it doesn’t matter how well you think you’re doing because with bipolar there is either an overwhelming feeling of severe depression or anxiety and /or agitation in the air. I never feel 100% ok. At best, I’m a 90 or even an 85. But I figure that’s the luck of the draw that I was dealt. It used to be much worse when I was both unmedicated and lacking the correct meds and dosage I needed. I had to lower my lithium from 900mg to 600mg for the sake of the courts but I might need to go back up. The only negative for me about lithium is that it makes me so drowsy and that is part of why I wrecked my Honda Pilot back in August of 2023, and my Kia Sportage in March 2021. Actually now that I think of it… I got arrested three years ago today for the very first time. Crazy to think about that.

This month was good because I finally got my Pretrial Diversion Agreement completed for the first dui offense and now my record reads: NEGLIGENT DRIVING – FIRST DEGREE.

Which isn’t great in all honesty, but compared to the alternatives it is pretty awesome.

It’s weird to reflect on my past reckless behavior and now I’m almost boring in comparison to how I used to be. But I am learning that for me and my bipolar disorder, boring is good; it’s healthier for me. It’s better for those who are closest to me in life. They no longer have to worry about who I am out with and what I am doing and when I am coming home.

That is a huge relief within itself. I am proud of me!

That wraps up any new and/or interesting thoughts.

Much love,

Dani