Really, trust me when I tell you you won't be missing a thing if you just skip right over this blog entry. You see, I haven't written a thing all day. I have to write something, I want to write something, but I have no idea what I'm about to say.

I really enjoy reading other people's writing here on the Open Salon web site. There is so much diversity of both style and substance. It makes me feel talentless sometimes. I know I'm talentless and I'm not fishing... Maybe I should rephrase that, but no backspacing allowed. It's really a stimulating and humbling thing to read everything from poetry to political commentary to personal stories of loss to music to funny stuff, and think about where what I might write fits into it all. My attitude has been "just write" and I have just written, but I find myself wanting to dig a little deeper now.

It's really been tough in the last week or so to connect with emotion. Maybe you've seen that in my last few meanderings. I finally saw my doctor this morning. Well, actually she's a nurse practitioner or physician's assistant or some other such thing, but she can write prescriptions and that's all I care about at this point.

Anyway, I was telling her all about how I'm fine, everthing's fine, blablabla. Then I mentioned the emotion issue, how Celexa/Lexapro seems to do a wonderful job of keeping me out of the hole of death. It turns off the negative feedback circuits so I don't loop myself into depression. But it also turns off emotion. Passion becomes something I can remember but cannot summon.

Back in the days when I was really creating and producing a lot of stuff, what kept me going for months and months on end was passion. Whether it was making records or building studios or inventing digital signal processors or writing software, it was never for the money. The money was just something that followed naturally. No, it was something inside me that had to come out, and it was almost invariably very good, very positive — and emotionally exhausting. After a six month project I would crash for two. After a two year project I would crash for eight months. When the creativity and passion was on, it was on full blast. Then I would collapse. Then I would start the cycle again.

When I finally found Dr Ahmed five years ago, we talked and talked about that pattern. Was it "bipolar?" He said he thought it was not bipolar in the sense most people think of it: Bipolar Type 1. Why not? Because the high periods were not impulsive, unproductive or self-destructive. He thought a diagnosis of Bipolar Type 2 might fit. He never seemed comfortable making that the diagnosis, though. As we got to know each other over the years, he said it was more likely that the super-productive (hypomanic) periods were just the natural expression of my creativity and intelligence. To him, it was the depressive phases which were pathological. I'm not sure it matters, really, what you call it.

Anyway. Since I've really gotten dialed in to Celexa as a treatment for the severe depression I've experienced so many times in my life, I have come to see that the productive phases and the depressive phased do seem linked. When I'm on the antidepressant I'm still creative and intelligent, but passionless.

Did I digress back there somewhere? So this morning I was trying to describe this apparent link between depression and passion, and while she was very nice and wrote my my prescriptions, I don't think she had a clue what I was talking about. Maybe that's because I don't have a clue what I'm talking about.

I asked her to give me a prescription for modafinil, which I had used before when Dr Ahmed was still here. Adding modafinil to the SSRI seemed to restore some of the passion, although it's hard to say for sure because during the time I was using it I was also in the process of some other stuff that may have shaded things.

The point of all this is that I'm trying to figure out how to balance the normal passionate element of my personality when unmedicated against the fact that, left unmedicated, the depression will kill me. I'm not exaggerating this at all; it's really that bad: balled up in the corner not moving for weeks and weeks at a time except to get up and pee bad.

So I took my updated prescriptions to SuperSaver at 27th and Cornhusker, and got my next round of citalopram and zolpidem. No insurance. Sixteen bucks. (Very doable.) I've got some bupropion left from the last round (which I'd had filled elsewhere), but I asked them to price that for me. $76 bucks for a month of 200mg bupropion SR twice a day. Better than the last place. Bupropion helps me move my ass, but other than that I'm not particularly fond of it. I think modafinil would be more effective. So then I asked them to price 200mg modafinil, 30 tablets... Three hundred and fifty-six dollars. So I guess we'll be holding off on the modafinil for a while.

Other things on my mind... I hope Theo pulls through her treatements with flying colors. How Brian manages to write such thoughtful comments on so many other people's posts, in addition to doing his own, is a mystery to me. I love AnniThyme's writing. Carol is gifted. Sandra NLM just awes me. I hope Caroline is okay. JK seems like she would be so interesting to get to know. Steven writes his ass off. Lea is beautiful and kind in everything she writes. Waking in Iowa is right next door. Natalie, Moana, kind and generous spirits. Nada, I hope you're hanging in there.

There are so many kind and gifted people here, I hope I'm not letting down my end of the deal. I feel very comfortable with my plan to write twice a day, but I worry that people will think I'm just trying to get attention and get people to rate and comment. That's not why I'm writing twice a day. I'm writing twice a day because otherwise I will only think about writing and not actually write anything. Anybody who has made it this far, please don't worry about rating or commenting. I'm grateful though. What the hell am I trying to say? I admire the passion every one of you bring to your writing. I wish I could meet all of you in person.

Typing is getting easier all the time. I have typed millions upon millions of words in my life, but never the right way. I finally forced myself to learn to type correctly, starting in late November. The old habits are finally receding and I'm starting to get to the point where I can almost type as fast as I think.

See? About nothing, once again. I'll pull something from the archives before bed for today's number two piece. (Did anyone notice I missed one post a couple days back? Ooh, sorry!) I'm just going to keep writing and writing and writing until something like passion finds a pathway through me to the keyboard. It may take a while. That's why my commitment is six months. One of these days it will happen. I'm still enjoying it, even though little is being produced, the process feels right. Take care, friends.