So as I continue to grapple with whether or not to put my biographical story out there, I came to a determination recently as I’ve been wading through another one of my older works. I’ve decided that rather than introduce myself to the reading public as a person who dealt with and survived a debilitating psychotic break, I plan to first publish my historical fiction work that does not reveal anything about my past. It is strictly creative and fictional.

I am definitely more at peace with this, but it also reveals something sad about our society–that I can’t find comfort and solace in sharing my whole self with the people out there. I’m not so much concerned with random people who might pick up my book, but rather the people with whom I work closely as well as the parent community of the school where I teach. It says something about our ability to accept those who may be different in some way, like myself.

This path was recommended to me by my therapist as well as my brother, and the only one I feel a bit conflicted about telling is my publisher friend who was imploring me to come forward with my story about my past. I will tell her, in time, of my plan, and therefore, may have to self publish my historical fiction account, but I’m okay with that. The next stage is developing a website where I can promote my book and try to generate a readership. That, to me, is the most difficult aspect of becoming a novice writer. Ideally, writers have PR people who do this for them, but I am no Stephen King, so I have to take the reins myself.

I am not good at self promotion; I’m a rather modest and humble person, but the world of writing intrigues me, and I want to take this on as a second venture to my teaching career, so the self promotion comes with the territory. I guess I’m at peace with my decision; although, it still bothers me that I can’t share my whole self with the people I work with and the parents of my students; maybe in time I will be able to as our society continues to become more accepting and enlightened.

So I’ll bring you up to speed. There has been a lot of stress in my life recently. With the start of the next school year looming in a couple of weeks, I’ve kind of been on edge, which has made me a bit short with the kids, something that I’m working on. Also, my wife’s grandmother is very sick in the hospital and could go at any time, so we are all on watch, praying for her peaceful passing. With this being the case, I’ve thought a lot about the great beyond, specifically, what happens to us at the end.

I discussed this idea with my wife’s uncle last night. We had gathered in my mother-in-law’s family room during a family get together to honor grandma, who we affectionately call GG. He believes that it’s like an eternal sleep, just complete darkness, nothingness, and I have a very hard time accepting that. I believe that our spirits travel somewhere better, where we are reunited with lost loved ones. It gives me a sense of calm when I see old relatives struggling at the end. With that said, it has been extremely hard for me to remain at GG’s bedside while my wife’s family talks to her and gives her updates on the family and all of her great grandchildren.

To cope with the pain and eventual loss, I’ve taken to reading and editing an old manuscript that I completed some time ago. I’ve found as I read through the work, that GG’s influence is all over it. I think I wrote it as a kind of a living tribute to her and all she stood for, and it brings me comfort to know that even when she moves on from the physical world, I will remember her in the prose that I will dedicate to her.

I’m thinking more and more, as I try to get my writing off the ground, that I will start with the manuscript that I am currently reading, so that I don’t have to expose all of my personal demons right off the bat with the biographical account of my past. I think that’s a good plan for me, and one I will abide by. I have to run this past my publishing friend who is planning on getting my works out to the public. I hope she will also help me market my projects because that to me seems like the most daunting task of all.

So as GG moves to a better place, I’m glad I can honor her with the outlet that allows me to cope with such difficult occurrences. I know that if she were capable, she would celebrate her influence in my creativity; she is truly an inspiration to us all.

The good news is that with just a month left of summer vacation, I am finding time every day to write. My latest manuscript is picking up steam and starting to take off. I think it is a compelling work so far and seems to be getting better. Finding time every morning to read and write has been daily therapy for me, and I feel that I am in a good place for the most part.

With that said, summer vacation has also meant spending more time with my six-year-old twins. My wife has been picking up extra shifts at work, so a lot of the time, I am home with the kids, coming up with activities and trying to entertain them as best I can. I am noticing that I am becoming increasingly short with them, and I even lash out at times. While I’m noticing this, it’s hard to address.

The irony is that I have less patience and lenience with my own kids than I do with my 8th graders in the classroom. Most people would say that it is more difficult to deal with young adolescents, with all of their raging hormones, than it is to deal with six-year-olds. I guess the verdict is still out on that, though.

Mostly, what bothers me is their lack of any independence. My wife says that I am being overly critical of them, and I think she is right. They are great kids with a lot of love and energy, and they are just happy that I’m around and want to take full advantage of ‘Daddy camp’. I need to find a way to be more patient with them and enjoy our time together because it goes fast, and before I know it, they’ll want absolutely nothing to do with me.

I feel guilty every time I lash out at them. Fortunately, both have a pretty thick skin, so my shortness doesn’t have a lasting impact on them. My goal for the next month that I am home is to take full advantage of our time together and try to enjoy it as much as I can. I should relish every opportunity to pitch the baseball to my son and do an art project with my daughter. I am a little embarrassed of my lack of enthusiasm for the games they want to play with me, and I have to display the same patience with them that I have with my 8th graders at school.

I had another productive meeting with my therapist today, and I got a lot off my chest. Mainly, I’ve been turning over the loss and defeat I feel about having another spring and summer go by when I didn’t accomplish my ultimate teaching goal: teaching at the high school level.

While I set my sights on returning to my 8th grade classroom in a month, I think the disappointment will dissipate a bit, at least until after winter break when jobs for next school year begin to pop up. I’ve told my wife and brother, those closest to me, that next year will be the last time I go after a high school position. After that, I think it will best to just let the dream go and accept my professional life for what it is: a very challenging and pleasant position in a well paying school district. It allows me to provide for my family and live a comfortable life, so there’s really nothing to be ashamed of.

I talked with my therapist about drives and motivations, and the most overwhelming one I’ve felt over the past few months is attaining that illusive high school post, but my writing continues to be an inspiration and drive for me, and I’ve let it settle on the back burner for most of the time since I received the good news that I might have an opportunity for my first work to be published. So while writing for publication has been another lifelong dream for me, I’ve wondered internally why the drive to get this goal accomplished hasn’t been as powerful as the one to pursue a high school teaching job.

I decided today in my morning session that I am going to try to reset my goals, and make my writing my number one priority. I’ve started another work that seems to have direction, and I’m searching for ways to promote my first manuscript, the one that my publishing friend plans to take a look at.

We were on vacation in South Haven, Michigan last weekend. I told my wife’s uncle that I believe South Haven to be one of the best places on earth. With that, I found some time to sit out on the front porch and get some real writing done. While I’m passionately batting away at the keys, I’m consumed with energy and excitement, and I’m transported away from the present to the world I am creating. The only problem, though, is that I’m not as motivated each day to write as I once was.

So the question remains: can I reset my goals and dreams? Can I make writing my number one motivation and priority? Only time will tell. I think the biggest issue with this idea is the internal conflict I still feel about promoting my work and going public with my story because the work that is garnering the most interest is the one based on facts about my past. As soon as I can come to terms with that, I think I will be in a much better place. In the meantime, all I can do is to continue to write and hope that I go about rectifying my internal struggle in the most appropriate way possible.

So I have found time to relax, recharge, and write during our four-day vacation in South Haven, Michigan. It has been extremely peaceful and beneficial to be here with my wife’s family and just enjoy some time away. The weather has been perfect, and I even found some time to get to a local golf course and enjoy a round with my brother-in-law.

These times with family must be cherished since it was my family that became my biggest support system and an impetus for my recovery and stability. One of my main goals coming up here was to find some writing time and get back to the creative process. My first two nights here, while everyone else was down at the beach watching fireworks, I sat on the front porch, in the moonlight, and flowed. I started a fictional work based on fact, and during the writing process I was invigorated with that creative spark that has been missing for so long.

Writers are a very self-conscious lot, and we really need to hear from others that our art is commendable, but even at the beginning stages of my latest work, I’m convinced that I really do have some talent. We’ll see where the work goes, but for now, I’m just excited that I started something after a three-year hiatus during which time I didn’t feel any inspiration at all.

The only thing that’s left is something that I talk to my students about: writing endurance. I don’t have much of it because I have been out of the game for so long. I’ve only been able to produce about a page and a half at a time. When I’m really flowing and going well, I can put forth about five pages in one sitting. That takes more time, but I often get lost in my work and lose all concept of time; those are the really great moments of composition.

So I’m going to try to keep up with the writing, developing more endurance for it, and trying to produce a lasting, significant work of fiction. My only other question is whether I have enough in me to come up with a full length novel like my other two completed projects. Only time will tell.

I had my weekly session with my therapist, and a consistent topic over the past few weeks has been my contention with normalcy and stability. Now those are two good things, right? Of course they are, but I believe that my acceptance of all things in my life has come at the expense of what my body craves so regularly: stimulus.

When I was manic and dangerously running all over the country, that stimulus was being fulfilled, and the crazy highs were filling my body’s need for excitement. And even after I was diagnosed and stabilized, I still found outlets for the “buzzes” I craved. Getting to a climactic moment in a good book, creating imagery in the prose I was writing at the time, and getting on the court and playing some pick-up basketball each fulfilled my hunger for excitement.

Over the years, however, these things have been harder to come by. I have found natural highs in getting outside and going for my daily 3-mile run, or coaching my high school basketball team in a heated rival match-up. I have also found these stimuli in the reading and writing process, but with my professional dreams going unfulfilled with each high school rejecting me as a candidate, and settling into what will probably be the final chapter of my professional life as a teacher in a high achieving, affluent middle school setting, I am settling into and accepting the normalcy that surrounds me.

So getting back to my previous point: normalcy does go hand-in-hand with stability, and that is the good news, but sometimes I miss those stimuli that lined my life during and a bit after the manic highs that got me into trouble way back when. My only hope is that these natural highs somehow penetrate the monotony that I feel in my life right now like they did at times in the past. I hope that my teams will compete for conference titles next season and that will give me the buzz I crave. I hope that the next good book I pick up will speak to me in new and exciting ways the way that the classic works I devoured in the past did. And my final hope is that when I do get into writing again, even more than these entries, that the creative process will once again stimulate my mind in ways only true art has the ability to do.

My family and I are going up to Michigan to celebrate the 4th with my wife’s side. We will leave tomorrow morning and will be there until Sunday. It will make for a calm and peaceful getaway with the people most important to us. I’m really looking forward to it for those reasons. Another reason I am excited to get away is because I hope to find some time to sit on the back deck, listening to the waves of Lake Michigan lap onto the smooth sand, and begin a new work of fiction. I have been putting it off in fear that it might not be as fulfilling at the writing process was the last time I was heavily immersed into a project, about three years ago. But avoiding something because you fear the worst outcome is kind of a coward’s way out, so as the kids are off at the beach, and my wife is engaging with family, I will steal away and attempt to get lost in my art again.

I had an interview yesterday with the department chair at a high school in the area and found out that I was not selected to move on to the next round. This news came after a string of previous disappointments trying to pursue a high school teaching job.

I’ve been teaching middle school for nine years and only have one year of high school teaching experience which was my first year in the profession back in 2010. That, in fact, was my favorite year teaching in large part because I love working with the older students.

When I tell everyone that I am not unhappy teaching middle school, I sometimes wonder if I’m trying to convince myself to accept that reality. Middle schoolers are tough, and on some days it feels like I’m doing more baby sitting than teaching.

Even with that said, my district pays well, I’ve established a solid reputation at my school, and my job does afford me the opportunity to coach at the high school in the same community, so I see many of my former students on the playing fields, which is one of the most rewarding aspects of what I do.

My ambition and drive to teach high school remain nevertheless, even with the fact that I am very expensive for a high school, and I do not have a wealth of high school experience. The chair yesterday on the phone told me that I interviewed very well, and that she would keep me in mind for future openings, and then she was very candid with me. “I don’t say this to other candidates,” she concluded, “but I would love to hire you. It’s just that this position involves an AP class and you have no experience teaching AP English. One of the other candidates has been teaching AP English at another high school for six years.”

So there it was, plain as day, the answer to my questions about whether I am doing something wrong during the numerous interviews I’ve had over the last two years. It is a flat out ‘no’. The reason I keep getting past over has nothing to do with me as a teacher, or an interviewer; it has more to do with my qualifications and experience. If a department chair can hire someone who has been in the high school classroom for several years over me who has not, then that’s the direction most of them will go.

The chair’s parting words were, “Stay strong,” and that’s precisely what I’m going to do. I’ve told family members who have witnessed my disappointment time and again that I’m going to give it one more year and then accept my fate as a middle school teacher for the rest of my career. I’m still holding out hope, but with each setback, I become less and less optimistic. Who knows, maybe it will happen; all I can do is keep pushing on and attempting to reach my professional goal.

So I turned the big 4-0 last December, and while it seemed like just another innocuous day, an excuse to get together with family and friends, it’s proving to be more of a momentous mark for different reasons, especially lately.

I’m never without a book. Ever since I was holed up in that group home during my early stages of recovery in 2004, reading was always therapy for me, my mechanism for coping, my way of wading through the storm. When I’m into a good book, I am taken away from the present, enjoying the fictitious world created by the writer. This was a lot easier to do back in 2004, when I still had some remnants of the hyper-creativity that invaded my brain during some of my more symptomatic times.

So today, 15 years into recovery and remaining stable throughout most of that time, the hyper-creativity is lost, the books I’m reading are becoming muted and gray stories about repeated themes that I have poured over and analyzed for so long; the passion, the desire, the excitement to devour a good book is becoming lost and distant. Is it the aging process? Am I just less motivated now? More dull perhaps? I’m not sure.

I’ve turned to writing now with hopes that it will help quell my disheartened spirit, and so far, it’s working, at least a little bit. I’m still searching for, and very much missing, the vigor and vitality that reading and writing brought me years ago, and I’m hoping they will return; although, I’m not quite sure how to make that happen.

I guess I’m torn between holding onto a past that was enlightening and exciting and accepting a present that is far less so. But if stability means giving into a more mundane existence, perhaps because I’m getting older, then I’ll have to be okay with that because there are still many things to celebrate in my life today, even without the drive, motivation, and fuel the arts brought me way back when.

Last night I went out and enjoyed a drink with my brother. I know it’s not recommended, but I’ve found that I can drink in moderation on occasion. So over a beer, we got to talking about my new blogging endeavor. Over the years, my older brother has been my strongest supporter. He is a physician in a family of doctors, so he has a better perspective on a lot of what I’ve gone through than someone not in the medical field. He has been there for me through all of the trials and tribulations, and there’s no one who celebrates my success and stability more than he does.

So I showed him my first few posts on this site and said that I hope to develop it as a writing platform for my completed manuscript. He was all for it, but then we got to discussing what would happen if my students and the community found out. As he intimated, everything on the internet is open for public consumption. And his words stymied me. As much as I would like to ignore the notion, I feel like I would be judged by my students and their parents, maybe even the teaching staff and my bosses. It’s a terrible thing but it is the truth.

He suggested that I continue to blog anonymously and to not attached my blog to my Facebook page unless or until I am completely ready. He left me with a final thought as he concluded, “if you were in any other line of work, I’d say get it all out there, be public, and have your voice heard, but teaching is a whole different animal…”

So my conclusion following our enlightened discussion is that the stigma attached to mental illness still exists, in some places more than others, but it is still very present and real. My plan is to continue to write because it is therapy, but to think long and hard about who I share my story with and how I go about getting it out there for public consumption. I guess I’m still without the answers I am seeking.

In our progressive society, mental illness is becoming more accepted as time passes. Even with this reality, there is still a stigma attached to individuals coping with different forms of mental illness. On the surface, I am a “normal”, “functional” adult with a stable career, a loving family, and a close group of friends, but deep down, my bipolar disorder lurks, and I live in fear of people finding out about the “real me.” This blog is dedicated to my obstacle-ridden journey of sharing my disease with the public when perception means so much to me and those with whom I share my life every day.