It’s not all that hard if you give it a thought, Phil, really, it isn’t.

You need balance, don’t you?

Well, yes, you may never attain this much coveted thing, as most “sane” people lack it.

Let’s start there.

You are smarter and more gifted in many areas than most who are not perplexed with some negative diagnosis on their brain.

And then you go fuck it all up with over-thinking and obsessing… oh, sorry for the redundancy, but it’s a fact.

Find that middle ground.

Start with appreciating how much you do to look after people,

Quote Al Soto (old half Apache mentor of mine),

“Phil, it doesn’t matter whether you have monetary success in life, you can’t eat money, you can’t feel money, you can’t express money. I assure you, you have, are, and will continue to benefit peoples’ lives through your music. It’s about creating value, not creating a bank balance.”

Still, I wouldn’t mind having a bank balance, maybe even a bank, all my own.

And with federal stimulus money, I could succeed in providing for artists everywhere by going belly-up throwing money at the arts. What? Hey, I can dream!

Cognitive therapy…

I know it as the creative process.

How I’ve survived a life of physical health issues, only to find that I’m bi-polar too, has been by writing about it, expressing it, sorting it through, seeing it to its many possible final conclusions, and ultimately, through sharing my “findings” with other people, thus, helping them.

So I’m trying to sort out the things that have sent me spinning lately and realized a few.

First off, I’m out of my mind.

Let’s move on.

Second, I have very little money and like to obsess on things. Obsessing on the negative rarely works. Go, read Og Mendino, Napoleon Hill and Clement… that whole positive mental attitude, magic of thinking big, conceive, believe, achieve deal.

So, I have little money. But I am not on the street, I still do the work I love and have for twenty years, I have a beautiful family around me. So, I did this… what is it really matters?

Oh, that would be everything I just mentioned.

Where’s the middle road?

Somewhere between the left and right, manic and depressive, up and down, and both extremes.

All I did was take a walk down past a couple fallow fields.

One hour later, I had meditated on everything, talked to myself as I would speak to another asking my advice, stepped back.

By the time I arrived home, I had all the answers I needed and realized the most important… my work in the arts has maintained me all along, not just through a need to express, but (just figured this one out!) through the need to give. Artists give people the expression they’re looking for (knew that bit), while giving themselves the cognitive therapy they need to survive.