Priorities

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

I drifted away from recovery meetings during the pandemic. I said Zoom gave me a headache, and didn’t feel real. And because I’m socially awkward, I didn’t reach out individually to recovery friends. And because I felt sheepish about being absent, I dreaded going back and having people ask where I’d been.

Well, I’ve been to two meetings since I talked about it in my last post. There I met people who were coming to the meeting after a long day at work. People who were toting their toddlers and dealing with the frustration of having to step in and out of the meeting. People whose loved ones were sick or dying. People who’d just lost a beloved pet. All of them had one thing in common: they were putting recovery first.

I feel humbled. I see that these people have what I once had; what I’ve lost. Between all my good work in writing my book and other outreach things, I’ve forgotten the simplicity of being just an addict, just showing up and hoping to win one more day clean, grateful to make coffee at a meeting.

I need to change my priorities. As I move forward into fledgling attempts at marketing my book and working on the next, recovery needs to come first. I have to rediscover that the principles I connect with at meetings are what let me see beyond the bullshit in my head so I can write.

In Other News, Still An Addict

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

This whole newly-published book thing, with all its ups and downs, is all very nice, but I can’t afford to forget what I am. I am one pill, drink, whatever away from falling back into a place that resembles the darkest chapters of my memoir. Or maybe worse. And I have mental health issues I can’t afford to neglect, lest I put myself at bigger risk for the above.

I see danger signs recently. Struggles with food aren’t that unusual, but there are others. Over the years, I’ve occasionally had to have painkillers for surgery or kidney stones, and that’s ok. We always control them tightly and keep me ultra-accountable, and usually it is fine. But there was one time a few months ago when I found myself blissing out a bit, even though I’d only been given the prescribed dose. And I enjoyed it. And there have been a few times lately that I’ve thought longingly of that feeling. And I found myself casting an envious eye on my daughter’s cannabis gummies she uses for her migraines, and thinking, wow, if I found the right strain I bet it would make me feel really good, and it’s legal and I wouldn’t need a prescription…***ALERT***ALERT***ALERT***

Damn. Writing it out like this makes it feel more real. I’m seeing the seriousness of it more. I have twelve years clean, and if I don’t get my shit together I could lose it all. How ironic would it be to have an inspirational book gaining readers while I’ve slid back into hell?

So what to do? Gee, let me think. Recovery fellowships aren’t perfect, but for me, they’re a damn sight better than trying to fix these thoughts alone. People talk about twelve steps, but right now my plan just has three: 1) Remove ass from whatever surface it’s currently on. 2) Transport ass to meeting. 3) Repeat.

Earn Good Karma!

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

Remember, by reading my new book, you’re advocating for the decrease of stigma in mental health care and addiction treatment! You’re promoting the development of self-acceptance for everyone! You’re casting a vote against “hustle culture” and merciless meritocracy!

WordPress is giving me a bit of link trouble, but the one below should take you there:

https://a.co/d/f0vSeKF

And if you do read it, reviewing will give you the karmic equivalent of a fluffy unicorn!

There, that’s done for now. Man, telling folks they should read my book is an emotional battle I will need to get a lot better at. It requires me to ignore the all the voices I had to battle with to get the thing written! It feels arrogant, self-centered, and pushy.

I just need to remember I genuinely believe it’s worth reading and you’ll get a lot out of it if you do. And I need to break marketing etc. into tiny, separate tasks so I don’t get overwhelmed. And I need to allocate time to work on my next project, so I don’t obsess too much over how this book is selling.

Oh, and not do drugs. Can’t forget that one.

Let’s Try Again!

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

OK, this picture should be shareable! Some folks reported trouble sharing the previous one.

There’s a lot of author-type things I didn’t set up until now. Prepping the manuscript for upload was such heavy emotional labor for me that I didn’t do much multitasking. Now I’m doing things like setting up my Facebook author page.

I tell myself (and it’s true) that this is all about the long haul; everything I’ve been going through will make subsequent books MUCH easier to birth. And I’ll know more of what to expect in terms of how long various things take.

I can’t wait to dive back in to my next project, Poppytown, while I continue learning how to promote this book. This is a new beginning.

THE BOOK’S HERE!!!

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

Now you can read the whole story. Now you can tell your friends to check it out. I hope a few of you will. I really do think it’s something that would make a lot of people feel more seen.

I signed up for the program that puts the e-book on Kindle Unlimited, so if you are a subscriber you can read it for free. Otherwise, the paperback and e-book are both purchasable.

My expectations are modest, and I’m trying to keep them that way. But still…read, review, tell a friend. And it would be amazing if you let me know what you think!

That Final Resistance

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

You know that scene in Return of the King where Frodo is standing at the very edge of the Cracks of Doom, about to drop the Ring in to be destroyed? And the Ring makes one final, giant effort to dominate Frodo’s will, and he puts it on?

Sometimes the moment before a breakthrough is the most dangerous part. I plan to do my Amazon upload tonight. The files are ready, the notes are ready, the last proof has been inspected, corrected, and exported. And the last twenty-four hours have been a shitstorm of doubt and self-condemnation. The past weeks have been filled with on-and-off struggles with my compulsive eating.

I’m flailing through a last wave of accusations that I’m publishing independently out of laziness, fear, or impatience; a last wave of reminders that my audience will be tiny compared to what I might have had if I queried and hit the jackpot; a last wave of I-hate-my-book, you name it.

I need to take a moment for gratitude that I’m standing on this precipice, struggling with these doubts. I need to acknowledge the miracle that I, a dual diagnosis person, a category often written off as a poor prognosis, have survived and put in the years of work to change one nurse’s casual comment “You should write about it,” into a book.

Good News, I’m So Close!!

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

My proof copy came! It has a couple of minor aesthetic issues in its interior that will require an annoying pass to make corrections (I’m at chapter 4 of 39 right now, ugh) BUT the cover looks awesome, the interior text and margins look great, spine text nicely centered, the size I chose feels just right…in short, it looks like a real, live book that does not scream “self-published.”

Some might say that the amount of work I’ve put into the print version doesn’t make sense, because the overwhelming majority of people who read it will probably be reading the e-book. But I wanted the print version to feel pleasing and right to those who enjoy print books. Print versions are also what one takes to in-person readings and other venues.

Anyway, the time is coming, very soon now, when I’ll announce that the book is live. In the meantime, I need to stay focused, make sure to take breaks, and not forget to take care of my physical and mental health (because I can’t get away with letting those slide. It doesn’t turn out well).

Tomorrow I See My Book!

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

I uploaded the print manuscript for Someday I Will Not be Ashamed to Amazon on Thursday, and my proof copy arrives tomorrow. Then I get to see if they printed it upside down or whatever, fix the issues, re-upload, get another proof copy, etc….and after I’m happy with it, I take the book and e-book live!

Getting through the first round of uploading was a big bottleneck for me, because the publishing website is pretty intimidating. I have a big feeling of “Oh God, if I check the wrong box I’ll screw something up irreversibly!” And that’s nothing, I am sure, compared to the fear I’ll feel when I press that “publish” button.

Anyway, the time is close at hand when I’ll switch from “preparing to publish” to “getting the word out.” And working in earnest on my next project. Tackling the next learning curve. And, whatever the book’s fate, be proud of writing it and grateful I was around to do so.

Roll For Initiative, Losers

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

That’s what I’m saying to my self-sabotaging demons today. I got a HUGE amount of work done on my final formatting of the manuscript yesterday, and I’m in the middle of getting a lot done today, and I’ve made a “date” to sit down with my spouse tomorrow night and do the KDP upload of Someday I Will Not Be Ashamed and get the proof copy ordered.

A lot of things could go wrong. Maybe the KDP interface will reject my file. Maybe the proof copy will arrive with all the text printed upside down. I don’t know, but it’s the next step.

Live with an eating disorder? A mental illness? An addiction? More than one of these? None of these, but just a constant struggle with shame and perfectionism? You might be one step closer to feeling a bit more seen. Because sometime in May, my book’s going to be available on Amazon.

Just a Little Longer

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

When my book’s actually published, will I be able to stop torturing myself about whether self-publishing was the right road to choose?

So close. Someday I Will Not Be Ashamed (click on the SIWBNA tab if you want to know more) is so close to being ready to go. But the formatting needs one more good pass, and I won’t be able to do a proper job of it until next week after I’ve recovered from a minor surgical procedure. And I’m struggling with the urge to hurry up, for no good reason than because I am tired of second guessing myself.

Let’s go through it one more time. The reasons for me self-publishing are:

  1. Flexibility–if I have an episode or am otherwise incapacitated, I’m not inconveniencing/hurting the profits of anyone but myself. This is the most important reason, triggered in part by my latest episode I’ve struggled through, and it’s about an honest evaluation of who I am and what kind of lifestyle I’m suited for.
  2. Autonomy–I don’t have to depend on the goodwill of others for my book’s existence. (Other people are vital to my efforts at helping readers be aware of the book, of course, but my book can’t be “orphaned,” which is a thing.)
  3. Simplicity–this is a reason specific to me and my plans. I’m planning more publications, some large and some small and short. Some would definitely be self published. By self publishing this book, I’m paving the way to treat all of my books the same rather than deal with separate sets of data.

My reasons not to self-publish can all be distilled into what-ifs and FOMO and “hey, my friend got a book deal, that could be me,” and “people will see me as a failure” and “nobody will read it,” etc. etc. and I am ready for those voices to shut the fuck up.

Another Step Toward Reality

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

The book cover for Someday I Will Not Be Ashamed is done. DONE. All the revisions and changes and nitpicking, all the asking for blurbs and deciding which to use, all the coming up with the right synopsis, bio, and author photo, all the realizing that my painstakingly chosen back cover text needs to be slashed by more than half…it’s all done. The front, spine, and back of the print cover are done. The ebook, of course, only uses the front, so a lot of this sweat has been about the print version.

So where am I now? Finishing up the formatting…I confess, I caved and bought Atticus to help me. When that’s done, it will be time to upload the print manuscript to the Amazon publishing platform (KDP). The usual way of doing it is to upload the print manuscript, order a proof copy to inspect, then take the print book live the same day you upload the ebook.

So a time will come, not long from now, when I announce my launch date. It’s getting more real all the time.

The Demons Are Screaming

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

I’m on a boat, steering towards my destination, and a bunch of demons on board are shrieking at me. If I steer away from where I want to go, they settle down, but if I return to my course, they start yelling again. Louder and louder, closer and closer to my ears.

This metaphor comes from Russ Harris, author of “The Happiness Trap,” a book about the field of acceptance and commitment therapy. He uses the demons to represent the self-sabotaging parts of ourselves. There are many metaphors like this, but I took a liking to this one. It’s easy to imagine myself at the rudder of the ship, trying hard to keep a firm grip and a focus on the horizon, while progressively larger and louder demons caper around and try to distract me.

His metaphor also has a very important detail: the demons can’t actually do anything. They don’t have the power to touch the boat’s controls, or touch me, or damage the boat, or anything else tangible. All they can do is scream.

Anyway, right now, they’re very loud for me. I am navigating some of the important pre-publishing milestones for my book, and the universe has challenged me with a severe back pain episode for the last week. As I shuffle and stagger around the house, the demons try to convince me that I shouldn’t work on anything. That this publishing thing is sure to go dreadfully wrong and who do I think I am to publish a book anyway, etc.

I am worried about my back, and the fact that I don’t know how long it will be before it improves. As a previous abuser of painkillers, pain is an emotional topic for me. The demons amplify that as they try to convince me I’ll be in pain forever and that I can’t be creative while in pain, therefore the writing part of my life is over…yeah, yeah, demons, I’ve heard it all. Still sailing though.

Formatting My Brain

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

So, I still hate my book. Understandable. But I’m making progress on trying to format with Word. Word, if none of you have ever tried to format a book length document with it, is hard. There are three schools of thought about book formatting–the first is “hire a professional you idiot,” the second is “you can do it yourself, but only if you buy our specialized software,” and the third is “yeah, just do it in Word, no big deal.” Since my husband’s a computer geek, we decided to try Word, with the option of giving up and buying software from option #2 if we suffer too much.

What I’ve learned so far is that Word and my brain have a something in common. They both do a kind of “butterfly effect” chaos in response to change. For example, I commanded Word to change the chapter headings from bold to italic. In response, Word did that. Yay me. But Word also removed all italics from chapters 2, 17, and 30. Okay…

I’m trying to deal with my frustration by comparing this to my body and brain. If I change my diet, I lose weight. Yay. But I also have a hypomanic episode. Boo. If I exercise more, my legs get stronger. Yay. But I get a UTI. Boo. If I get some extra sleep, I feel less tired. Yay. But I get disoriented. Boo. Any departure from the status quo has unpredictable effects.

We’ll see what happens with Word. Trouble is, you can’t maintain a status quo when the whole point of the process is to change your document.

I Hate My Book

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

No one can read a piece of writing this many times, over this many months, without beginning to despise it. Doing the final formatting for self-publication is just the latest round of this. Sentences I once loved appear trite; passages formerly judged effective sound cheesy. The book as a whole, described by one reviewer as “a rollercoaster of honesty, insight, and courage,” has instead become a self-indulgent rant.

I know I am not alone; I take comfort in the stories about other writers’ processes. But right now it’s hard to imagine ever falling in love with my book again. And it’s hard to imagine feeling much but relief when it’s done; relief that it’s gone from my desk and I can work on other things.

Right now, I’m coping by trying to pretend this isn’t my book. I’m pretending to be a professional that the author has hired to prep the book for publication. It’s not my book. I don’t need to edit the content. I don’t need to have an opinion about it. I just need to do the work.

Ugh.

Write Faster

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

I’m worried about the future of my brain, and this is one thing behind my decision to go with the faster, more individually controlled, and more flexible process of self-publishing. Like Hamilton, I feel I need to “write like I’m running out of time.”

I really am grateful that my long process of meds adjustment is finished–but the new status quo involves the maximum therapeutic dose of two meds where there was one. My anxieties don’t like this…will I need a third in a few years? A fourth? Will everything just stop working?

The cumulative effects of bipolar disorder, treated or not, on the brain are not well known. But there’s some data indicating an ongoing impact on working memory, executive function, and other abilities. I may experience more than the normal age-related hits to my cognition as the years go by. They might form a gentle slope or abrupt drops. I don’t know.

Right now, I’m still working on formatting Someday I Will Not Be Ashamed. I hope to publish it in late April, maybe May. Once it’s done, I can turn my attention to the next set of projects, knowing there’s a part of me anxious to say everything I want to say while I still have the ability to say it. We all face an uncertain future, both inside and outside ourselves. I guess I’m just feeling especially aware of it right now.

Hoping to Reach Out

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Why did I write a book? I have to remember, every time I get overwhelmed with publishing details or start to worry about nobody ever reading it, that I had a very specific reason for going to all this effort. I wanted to reach out.

I keep reading depressing statistics about self-published books–but I have to remember that if my book makes even one person feel less alone, or gives one person a bit of a window on what a loved one is going through, or alters one stigma-supporting assumption a person previously had, then it was worth it all.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that not everyone knows the things I know! Clinical depression and other mental health shenanigans have been a normal part of my life for so long. And being an addict is normal for me too, even though it has been eleven years without drugs. It’s alive and well, not only in memories but in my current and permanent struggles with food. It’s hard to understand that not everyone knows what it is to compelled to do something self-destructive…and to lie, steal, or otherwise act in a way their own values abhor, because they are driven by an overwhelming craving.

When I do remember these things, these differences between me and the “normal,” it helps me to recall that my book has a useful purpose.

Cover Art in Progress!!

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

Exciting news about the memoir…I just got my first round of potential cover designs! My task was to review them and give detailed feedback to guide the artist in making a second round. Turns out I had a clear favorite, so that made it a bit easier.

There are a lot of professionals out there to help a self-publishing author…help with editing, with formatting, with the actual upload process, etc. My editing is already done, and due to financial limitations my computer geek husband and I are going to try to do the formatting ourselves with the help of some of the great software out there…but the cover was the one area we knew needed a professional. The cover is of paramount importance, since most people first see the book as a thumbnail online. So, I bit the bullet and hired someone. And seeing even this first round makes me glad I did.

I’ve learned a lot during this process so far. Before the artist did the first round, they asked me to provide them with a lot of information about what I wanted, including references to existing book covers I liked in my genre. I did a LOT of scanning through Amazon and library software to find a good list. It was illuminating…what do I like in a cover, and why? What turns me off, and why?

Anyway, I can’t wait to see the second round. And it was delightfully surreal to see my title on what looked like a real book.

“Normal” Problems

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

My meds adjustments are done for the time being, and I’m so grateful. For about the last four months, I’ve been in this adjustment process–tapering down one med, tapering up another, waiting to see results or lack thereof, tapering up a new one, et caetera. It has to be done carefully and gradually (which is why the “ask your doc-in-a-box about New Drug X!” commercials annoy me so much). And it’s hard, so hard, to be patient and endure side effects and not give up hope.

Now, I’m back to my baseline! My baseline is not a symptom-free status. I have plenty of symptoms; I have good days and bad days. But the worrisome level of hypomania isn’t there. I’m sleeping a little more. I’m less disoriented. I have more energy to focus on “normal” problems.

“Normal” problems are scary…and when you come out of your skull and engage with them more than you have been, it can feel overwhelming. Money. Relatives’ needs. Medical tasks. The nuts and bolts of the business side of my writing and publishing what I write. I haven’t been completely out of touch, not the way I have during some points of my life, but I do feel more connected now than I have in a while. I’m talking and thinking and strategizing about longer-term problems…and coming up against the ones I don’t have a solution for yet. Or maybe ever.

Recovery literature reminds us to be grateful for “normal” problems; all the problems we wouldn’t have if our addiction had killed us. Mental health advisors caution us to up our self-care as needed so we won’t subconsciously drag ourselves down into the familiar darkness to avoid the things we fear we won’t be able to deal with. And both of these tell us to break it down: one step, one phone call, one errand, one brainstorming session, at a time. And to accept doing what we can, not what we think we should be able to do.

It’s Raining in My Head

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

As a Californian, I am contractually obligated to be grateful for every precious drop of rain that falls. And I am. But as my region deals with huge rainfall and flooding, it can be challenging. And the varying pressure triggers my back pain. More seriously, it triggers spikes in my daughter’s chronic migraines. And I can’t go out. And the dog wants to go out every 20 minutes, and she can’t understand why we don’t turn the rain off, and we have to put on her doggie raincoat and leash her and take her out each time because there’s a giant puddle in back, and it’s all a giant hassle. And it’s dark.

I know I’m too sensitive to my emotional environment sometimes. The more down those around me feel, the worse I feel. It’s hard right now to get excited about publication tasks, especially since I was already feeling a bit overwhelmed. A heavy depressive fog has settled over me. I’m always cold. The silence required by my daughter’s headaches is oppressive (there is only so long I can tolerate headphones without needing a break).

Here’s the part where I introduce a clever metaphor and link all this to the general experience of living with one of my conditions. But I haven’t got one today. It’s raining in my head, and I have to wait it out. I have to remember all the things I’ve been excited about, even if I can’t feel the excitement right now. It will come back. It always does.

No Promises

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

My life is littered with a trail of broken promises, each one giving me more material to shape into self-loathing. Which ones were fueled by bipolar disorder, which ones by being an addict, and which by simply being a flawed human, I’ll never know. But I’ve learned, the hard way, that my promises need to be small, short-term, and specific. That’s why I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. It’s not that I don’t think setting intentions is a good thing, or that doing so in a spirit of camaraderie with others isn’t helpful. But they aren’t right for me.

So, for 2023, I do not vow to get my first book, or my first two books, published–but for today, I set an intention of doing the next step of cover designer research. I do not vow to lose weight–but for today, I set an intention to eat in a way that doesn’t hurt me. I do not vow to make a little money with my fledgling tarot reading business–but today, I set an intention to participate in my favorite forum. And so forth.

I need to accept that I live in cycles. No matter how many meds I take, my ability to do things–including basic self-care like exercise and eating well–is going to fluctuate. And when I get into shame about that, it only prolongs the down phase, because people who are in shame don’t take good care of themselves even if they can again.

Post-Holiday Rehab

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

The holidays are over for another year, and I survived. Mostly. My family has been pretty low-key about the holiday season for years, so I have it better than many, but it’s still socializing with the added elements of overthinking and societal pressure to be happy and having a good time.

I made a choice to eat without restriction for about ten days spanning Christmas. Let’s have a show of hands from everyone who believes I’m now pleased with my decision…yep. I am feeling the consequences of my actions. Not in the way a normal person might say, with a bit of chagrin, that they gained weight over the holidays. No. What I’m dealing with is the aftermath of what, eventually, became a full-on compulsive eating episode, because that’s what happens when I continue eating a certain way long enough, and how did I think this time would be any different?

Could I have made it through the holidays without doing what I did? I don’t know. What I’m mad at myself about is not the choice I made but my failure to acknowledge the extent of the consequences I would face; my wishful thinking. If I’d faced up to the implications of what I was doing, maybe I could have sought support to help mitigate the damage or help me come out of it before the most painful and punitive ending binges.

Now I have to heal, and recalibrate my broken metabolism, and accept that it’ll take a long time to repair the damage. It’s day one of the “maybe don’t eat yourself sick” plan–and that’s going to have to do.

Is Happiness Boring?

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

When someone said this to me, I absorbed it in a couple of different ways. The first way was the way they probably intended it: the simple fact that happiness is less dramatic than suffering. How many operas have you seen about people having pleasant lives and untroubled relationships? Great writers and artists have spent millennia spinning human pain into beautiful tapestries of vision and thought, and it can’t be denied that without said pain a great deal of beauty would not exist.

Then, of course, I thought about it from a therapist’s perspective. When I was in the field, I sat with a lot of people who said they wanted to be happy but routinely sabotaged any progress toward a life that might make them happier. (Then, of course, I went home and did the same thing.) We (most humans, but especially those who got imprinted with drama growing up) are wired for drama, and when things remain the same we get antsy.

Now that I live with bipolar disorder, I get to see my brain play out a version of this in my cycles. When coming out of a depressive phase, I start to feel happy, even content. Ordinary pleasures have a new intensity as I rediscover them. I can focus on tasks, and I get a lot of satisfaction from completing any. Life takes on a calmness…aaannndd then I’m hypomanic. The calm phase never lasts; my brain is wired to build the good energy up into problematic energy.

My brain does what we enact in our lives. “Things are too quiet around here. I need something to happen.” So we make something happen. We act out with a problem behavior, so we can have the drama of guilt and trying to get back on the wagon. We text that ex. We’re late to something important. We get furious at something that might have barely hit our radar if we weren’t subconsciously looking for a fight.

And we’re back in drama. Familiar, interesting drama. Interesting to us, anyway. Not so much to those who have to watch us spin. Again.

I Surrender

~ Lori Lynne ~ 1 Comment

To live with conditions like mine is to live life in a cycle of denials and surrenders. “Sure, I can do the thing!” is followed, days or weeks or months later, by “well…no, not in a consistent or sustainable way, so I shouldn’t have said yes to anyone who is now inconvenienced or even hurt by me not being able to do the thing.” Knowing where to draw the boundary between what I should and should’t commit to is a lifelong learning curve.

I’ve had a dream of finding a literary agent for my memoir. I dreamed of what might follow if I hit the jackpot and got one. But recently, I had an extended bout of hypomania bad enough to require a meds change and its own struggles with side effects. It made me remember how unpredictable my life, and my ability to function, is.

It was time for me to take a look at what kind of lifestyle I’m suited for, and what kind of lifestyle I want. The answers led me to a surrender and a shift in my plans…I’m going the self-publishing route. A route on which, if I’m unable to do promotion efforts during a dip, I’m impacting nobody but myself. I had already planned to do this for my subsequent poetry and smaller prose books, but wanted to do otherwise for the memoir. Now, I’m going to treat them all the same, for simplicity’s sake.

Self-publishing is not easy. It’s a lot of work and a whole new set of tasks to learn. But I can do it at my own pace, and I can manage my promotion efforts according to my abilities.

My body knows my decision is the right one (have you ever felt your body react to a decision? It’s weird, but unmistakable). I feel better than I have in months. Let’s hear it for surrender.

Channeling Oliver Twist

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment
“Please, I want you to read my book.”

Today I sent out my first book blurb requests. These are the brief, eye-catching reviews/comments that get displayed on your book’s back cover or dust jacket. Hopefully, they’re from someone authoritative in the field the book is about, or the author of better-known works like yours. So requesting them means asking for the time of someone who’s probably pretty darn busy/in demand/gets lots of mail like yours.

Eeeek.

I chose the first round of attempts carefully, and I hope realistically. Let’s face it, getting someone to read a first book isn’t easy. But I did include two “swinging for the fences” people in the batch, people who’ve been inspirational to me for decades. It was more of a symbolic gesture than anything else, to be honest, but there’s always that one-in-a-billion chance.

The process was a lot like querying, but even more individual…I did make a basic “blurb request template letter” but I altered it a lot for each person to reflect why I chose them and why they might want to consider the book.

I feel good about getting the first batch out. Now I need to relax and focus on other things for a bit as I wait for positive or negative answers, or for cricket noises of sufficient duration to let me know no answer is coming.

The Bipolar Diet

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

What is dieting success, and who defines the difference between success and failure?

Of all the posts I’ve made on this site, the one garnering the most likes has been my recent post “Soup du Jour” in which I talk about the inconsistency of my eating patterns. Did it strike a chord for people, or was it just that it wandered into a highly populated tag? I suspect the latter.

Whatever the case, eating and weight is always an issue worth discussing for me. People with mental health issues have trouble feeding themselves healthfully and consistently even if they didn’t start off with an eating disorder like I did. I’ve spent decades of my life traveling up and down the scales, eating every diet imaginable. At five feet seven inches, my lowest adult weight (for about ten minutes) was 145. My highest adult weight was 315 pounds. Today, and for about six years now, I maintain a weight in the range of 215 to 235 pounds.

Am I a success for learning to maintain a weight at least 80 pounds lower than my highest? Or am I a failure for being unable to sustainably go even lower? Depends who you ask. Certainly doctors, insurance companies, and clothing designers will never be pleased with me. But if you’ve never been as overweight as I have been, you don’t know what a difference that 80 to 100 pounds makes to my health and mobility. It’s night and day.

If anyone had told 17-year-old, 125-pound me, throwing up her Herbalife supplement after packing her 500-calorie lunch, that she’d one day be grateful to weigh 220 pounds, her head would probably have exploded. It would have exploded again if someone had told her that this future 220-pound woman would experience a level of self-acceptance unimaginable to the desperately thin girl.

Micro-Learning

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

It’s still hard for me to learn new things when I start out sucking spectacularly at them. I think we all get discouraged if we don’t show any kind of talent at the beginning…part of it’s embarrassment; part is more pure ego (If I can’t be the best, why bother?).

One area I’m weak in is technology. I’m not the worst for my age, but I need to get better, and right now my nemesis is video editing. I am learning how to use iMovie, and to say I am finding it bewildering would be an understatement. But with perseverance, and a bunch of humility, I am improving.

My secret is micro-learning. With the invaluable aid of YouTube, I learn one or two itsy-bitsy things per session. I’ll search something very detailed…how do I rename a project? how do I import an audio file? Not trying to tie it all together yet. Then I take notes for myself on the thing I just learned, because my messy brain is almost certain to forget it the next time I sit down with a project.

It’s an accomplishment for me, because it goes against a very old pattern. I got into a good college on the strength of some natural talent and a lot of natural test taking ability. When I found myself dealing with much harder material there, I had no idea what to do when I was bad at something. I didn’t know how to learn…and I definitely didn’t know how to ask for help.

It’s taken decades, but now I know how. And as long as I can learn, whole worlds are open to me.

Waiting for the Other Shoe

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

Uh-oh…I feel good today. The side effects of my meds change have died down, and the new med is looking promising. I’m a bit less hypomanic, I’m sleeping a teeny bit better, and my morale is up. Thinking about my writing projects and publishing issues, while still chaotic, doesn’t feel quite as overwhelming.

So, I’m waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop. I’m waiting for a relative’s health to take an abrupt turn for the worse, or for the dog to start throwing up, or for the nearby oil refinery to have a toxic leak. Because people with brains and/or backgrounds like mine are wired to expect disaster.

That’s one reason I carry a deep conviction that feeling happy is always the precursor to trouble. The other reason has to do with the deep shame I still battle–not the shame over things I’ve done, but the unexplainable shame I seem to have been born with. It tells me that there will always be a price for any happiness I experience; that in taking anything for myself I am stealing it from the world.

All this makes it harder to appreciate days like this, but I try. It’s a gorgeous fall day here in Northern California. We won’t be on fire again for several months, and the air is crisp and fresh. I got five glorious hours of sleep last night. My favorite jeans are clean. So is my hair. And there’s nothing I have to do for the rest of the day. Life is good.

New Name

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

Just a quick note to any repeat visitors…you’re not imagining things; I did just change the name of this site. I decided that, in the coming years, having it and its address just be my name will make the website easier for people to find. It also reflects the fact that the site has become a bit more eclectic. The things I’m sharing have always been diverse, but most were focused on mental health, addiction, or, more recently, the psychology of writing. But now I’ll also be sharing news about what happens to the varied stuff I write–and, someday, links to my work itself. And how awesome is it that I’m thinking years ahead; that I fully expect to keep writing different things? Even when I’m scattered and frustrated with myself for being unable to focus in on one sometimes, I am aware that every dream is a gift.

Don’t worry, though, there will still be plenty of words about other aspects of what it’s like to be a bipolar recovering addict with an eating disorder! The conditions I live with sit with me, write with me, and dream my dreams with me. They will always be part of how I present myself to the world, because it’s a way of reducing stigma and perhaps making a reader here and there feel less alone.

Yay! I Suck!

~ Lori Lynne ~ 1 Comment

ENOUGH got its first rejection letter! And I’m trying to celebrate, because this is a milestone I’ve been waiting for. You see, to get a rejection letter you have to have sent a query, which means you have to have finished something to the point of being ready to send a query. You have to have done a proposal. You have to have come up with a query letter. And then, you have to have navigated the requirements of the particular agent you’re querying and done the annoying chore of altering your materials as needed.

I did all that. It feels like the final rite of passage from the realm of “I’d like to write a book” through “I am working on a book” to “I have written a book.” Even though I’ve had a full manuscript and been revising it for more than a year, sending it out for the first time makes it feel like a Book.

All through this process, I’ve been managing my expectations. I’ve planned to query for a certain amount of time and then, if nothing happens, look at hybrid or self publishing. My hypomanic brain jumps ahead and tries to plan for that stuff now, even though it’s not time yet. It doesn’t help that I do need to learn more about these realms for my other projects.

But right now, celebration. I’m told that everybody’s really backlogged between now and the new year, so I’ll probably wait until January before sending out the next batch. In the meantime, I want to focus on other projects and not worry about publishing…because the question of how to publish these is irrelevant until they actually get done.

You hear that, brain? Would you kindly turn off the hypomania and let me focus on one thing? Consider it a holiday gift.

Mystery Potion

~ Lori Lynne ~ 1 Comment

I never, never want to change my psych meds. The overwhelming urge is to leave them alone, because I’ve found a regimen that has a minimum of side effects. Problem is…they’re not doing the job right now. I’ve had a consistent pattern of frequent hypomania for months, and the symptoms are starting to impact my life more. My rapid and disjointed speech is sometimes noticeable to others. Sleep is worse than my already-bad levels. I am hypercreative, but unable to settle to one project or get anything on paper. The urge to self-medicate with overeating is strong, and I’m not always able to resist it. So, it’s time for me to open my mind to a change. The last change I did was just a slight increase in the med I was already taking, but this one is adding something new.

Imagine you’ve been handed a magic potion in an opaque flask. You know you need to drink it, but you have no idea what it’s going to do to you…caught between the misery of the moment and your fear of the unknown, you raise it to your lips and swallow. And then you wait.

The next day, you feel sick. And the day after that. Or you’re semiconscious, or your mouth is so dry you can barely speak, or you can’t have sex anymore, or you’re heart-poundingly anxious, or you have sudden self-destructive thoughts, or you’re dizzy…but you continue to drink the potion, because you’ve been told all this is normal and will pass soon. But when will I feel better? you plead with the wizard. In six to eight weeks we’ll see, is the common reply.

Yes, though there are a few “big guns” of psych meds that have immediate effect, such as tranquilizers and antipsychotics, most others manifest side effects long before any therapeutic effect is felt. Which is why the popular misconception of popping an antidepressant to lift one’s mood is a pile of crap.

After an eternal couple of months, it’s time to assess whether the new med seems to be helping–and if not, it’s time to start over again with the next candidate, beginning the cycle of side effects all over again. Anyone who thinks psych meds are a crutch used by people who want to avoid the pain of life is invited to ride this merry-go-round a few times, until they understand it’s not the easy way out. It sucks, and we wouldn’t do it if we weren’t convinced it was our best bet for being more present and useful to the world and the people we love.

My Halloween Costume is a Human

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

How many times have I sat in a group of people and wondered how long it would be before it became clear that I didn’t belong there? Whether someone would call me out at group level, or take me aside politely and say, “No offense, but this space is for humans only?”

I saw my psychiatrist on Friday, and as often happens, the process of digging into my symptoms makes me more aware of them. I get used to the way things are for me, but when I’m sitting with the psychiatrist, when he nods sagely at a description and suggests increasing or adding a med, well…I get reminded how far from normal-normal my normal is.

I know normality isn’t a real thing, nor should it be a goal. But when I feel so far from it that I see myself as an alien cosplaying as a human, that’s a problem. It’s a problem when the sounds around me fade out and an invisible spotlight appears above my head, marking me as the intruder.

As a result of Friday’s meeting, I am facing another meds change. This means, at a minimum, days of disorientation. Other side effects could happen, maybe for weeks. Historically, I tend to have a pattern of “it gets worse before it gets better.” So…I might be feeling even more like the alien in the human suit soon.

Trick or treat.

Gratitude. Ugh.

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes I worry that a person in pain will take gratitude-related advice as “suck it up, whiner!” I feel that inappropriately-timed reminders of gratitude’s importance can be condescending, minimize the importance of someone’s pain, and make them feel it’s not safe to express said pain.

That being said…yeah, cultivating gratitude is vital. Ugh. It’s as necessary as air for me, because self-pity was the biggest saboteur of my early attempts at drug abuse recovery and at managing my mental health. I felt sorry for myself when it become clear that recovery wasn’t going to make my brain normal, or let me sleep, or get me to a level of functioning suitable for the kind of work I wanted to do.

Today, it’s helpful for me to at least attempt a gratitude-centered perspective when things are tough. And my past gives me lots of useful fuel. Annoyed that my back hurts after doing dishes? Remember the many times dishes weren’t even an option. Feeling frustrated that I can’t be of more help in my daughter’s health struggles? Remember how close I came to not being there for her at all. Tired or scattered about my writing projects? Remember I could have died without writing anything.

My place is a mess? Got a place to live. Hate cooking? Got food to cook. Getting old? Beats the alternative. I can go on and on–if I’m willing to go there. But does it really do anything? It doesn’t fix everything, that’s for sure. And it won’t help if I try to force it because of a sense of duty or shame…”why am I sad? I should be grateful…”

But if I can let gratitude in, let it coexist with my other perfectly valid emotions, it will help balance my tendency to dwell on the negative. And I can use the help.

Off Switch

~ Lori Lynne ~ 1 Comment

How do I get my brain to STOP? When I know it’s tired enough not to be productive, or I know I’m not well enough to be productive anyway, what button do I push that will convince it that it’s OK to relax and not learn or create anything right now?

Well, what button BESIDES drugs, compulsive eating, and other destructive things? For over a decade, I used ever-increasing numbers of sleeping pills because my brain wouldn’t yield to anything less than a chemical hammer. Opioids during the day also soothed my hyperactive brain. A box of donuts is usually good for shutting it up, but eating large amounts of junk comes with a high physical and mental cost.

I know, I know…I should exercise and meditate. Well, my Tai Chi classes finally reopened, so that’s a step in the right direction. But except when I am actually doing it, it doesn’t seem to change much.

Right now, for example, I just stopped in the middle of typing this to grab a piece of paper and write down an idea about how to fix a problem with the video editing I’m trying to learn. I had to remind myself that I’m in the middle of something.

What I really want to do is unplug for the day. It’s Friday afternoon, there’s nowhere I need to go, and I only slept 2 hours last night. I want to zone out and play Minecraft, or put an old, comforting movie on. And my head hurts from the video editing stuff. And I don’t want to think about the different projects I am working on, or how messy the house is, or my latest NEW writing idea. I don’t want to think at all. But the mild hypomania that has been in play more often than usual for the last few months means I spin, and spin, and spin.

Pain We Obey

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

“To goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey.”

-Marcel Proust

I was 32 when chronic pain changed my life. I know many people who experience worse suffering than the pain that comes with my cracked vertebra…but when it’s your pain, and you have it all the time, it feels consuming. I know what it’s like not to be present in the moment because I’m counting the minutes until I can lie down and take painkillers. I know what it’s like to plan my days around pain, to quit activities I used to enjoy, and to struggle with the simplest daily tasks.

When it became clear I was an addict with a capital A and needed to go the abstinence route, I felt so sorry for myself. My black-and-white thinking painted the future as an infinite desert of unrelieved pain and bleak depression. It felt unfair. I had to change my attitude a lot to have a chance at staying clean.

When I went to rehab for the last time (well, let’s hope it was the last time) doctors told me that overuse of meds had screwed up my pain processing system to the point that my body was creating and amplifying some of the pain. They said for every year I had used narcotic painkillers, it would take about a month clean to figure out what my true pain level was. I’d used them for eleven years. So the first year of recovery was going to suck pretty badly.

Today, I can say with gratitude that the doctors were right. Though chronic pain is still part of my life, my average pain level is far lower than before I got clean. It gets bad occasionally, but “bad” now is what was normal back then. That’s only my story, of course. I got lucky.

Living with chronic pain, like living with mental illness or being in recovery, opens us to trying things that might not have been on our agenda if life had stayed “normal.” Spiritual exploration. Meditation. Trying to find and do small things that give pleasure. Examining our ideas about what we are if we’re not our jobs or our productivity. All of you who let pain steer you into a quest for growth inspire me: how amazing that we perform, however imperfectly, this mysterious alchemy that turns pain and despair into something beautiful.

Soup du Jour

~ Lori Lynne ~ 2 Comments

What’ll it be today? What am I going to eat? When am I going to eat? How am I going to eat?

To live with me is to, periodically, listen to my announcement of which nutritional and/or behavioral hack I have decided to use in my ongoing task of coping with my eating disorder and broken metabolism. To live with me is to notice, at some point, that I’m no longer doing the thing I announced to you a day or week or month ago. To live with me is to listen patiently as, when I get tired enough of things not going well with my eating, I announce my new plan.

I hate it. I despise the fact that I can’t settle on one nice, sensible way of eating and stick to it. Even if it has to be a weird way, I wish I could just pick one and stick with it. There are common threads–for example, being low on carbs is a thing during all but the most fuck-it phases because of my blood sugar issues–but a lot of other things vary.

How low-carb are we talking here? Strict, or more lenient? Am I practicing intermittent fasting? If I am, how extreme? How am I addressing the fact that my body’s satiety signals are pretty much broken, and I therefore need some kind of attention to portion control? Am I using behavioral rules or techniques, such as don’t-read-at-the-table, to help with emotional or mindless eating?

It varies. It varies because I vary. Sometimes I’m capable of certain things, and sometimes I’m not. Sometimes, when things get bad in other ways, being sloppy with food ends up being the least destructive way for me to act out. And, on one level, I’m ok with that. I’m even ok with the fact that all my back-and-forth efforts usually do no more than maintain my weight, because I know that if I weren’t doing my best, I’d be back up at my top weight of nearly 100 pounds above where I am now.

But I hate the inconsistency. I hate the judgment from people who don’t see why I can’t stop the merry-go-round and just eat like a normal person. And, of course, I hate that I can’t just eat like a normal person. Even other people in recovery from eating disorders sometimes judge me for my chaotic relationship with food–surely, if I were doing the emotional work, I wouldn’t flit back and forth like this. I see their point…but it’s the best I can do.

It’s almost as if I have bipolar disorder or something. Oh, wait, I do.

Goldilocks

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

I have come to the conclusion that Goldilocks is not an addict.

It’s not that she is without issues, most notably a lack of respect for others’ personal boundaries. But her behavior is clearly abnormal when considered from an addict’s perspective.

Come on–she samples two bowls of porridge and finds the third one to be “just right.” She eats it. Satisfied, she goes and finds a nice place to take a nap.

What’s wrong with her? Why isn’t she rummaging through the bears’ kitchen, trying to find more of that perfect stuff? Or trying to mix the hot and cold porridge to capture that “just right” again? Or just gulping down the too-hot and too-cold porridge, because it’s better than nothing? How is it possible that she is moving on?

After decades of living with an eating disorder, I know how to eat in a way that my body and brain like. I’ve learned, the hard way, that starving myself sets me up for an inevitable compensating binge. I’ve learned, through much trial and error, which foods trigger cravings and are best avoided. I’ve learned not to deprive my body of fats and other things I used to be trained to withhold. When I eat the right way for me, I feel stronger, calmer, and in less pain. I don’t obsess about food between meals. My body and mind send me messages amounting to “About time, dumbass!”

There’s just one problem–I’m nothing like Goldilocks. The concept of moderation, of just right, of enough...my addict brain squirms in discomfort. No quick gratification from weight loss? No resolutions to starve virtuously after the latest episode of binge eating? No “tomorrow will be different?” Weird.

Embracing the reality of my eating disorder, and the need to deal with it even while other conditions might seem more urgent, is a balancing act I will never master. This process will never end, only ebb and flow. And I have to love myself anyway. Weird.

La La La La I’m Not Listening…

~ Lori Lynne ~ 1 Comment

“Don’t believe everything you think,” goes the saying. There’s a constant negative monologue in my head, competing with and trying to drown out anything positive I generate, and when I’m in a depressive dip it gets fucking LOUD. I want to stick my fingers in my ears and hope it gets tired and shuts up. But that doesn’t work. Trying to artificially pump up positive thoughts doesn’t work either. Trying to debate or fight the dark feelings just fuels them because now they’re getting more attention. I have to coexist with the voices, not fight them, not try too hard to distract myself from them…but, somehow, not believe them.

When I was studying counseling, one of my favorite professors told a story about a schizophrenic client who believed he lived on the moon. The professor, then a young therapist, tried the techniques he had been taught to challenge and question the client’s delusion. But all this did was reinforce the client’s resistance. One day, tired and discouraged, the therapist went a different direction. He decided, just for the day, that he would not try to convince the client of anything. Instead, he asked, “What’s it like to live on the moon?”

And for many sessions to come, he listened to the client’s stories about living on the moon. As the client came to trust him more, the therapist was able to tie some of the stories to what was happening in the real world and engage on that level some of the time. But he had let go of the idea that it was his job to convince the man to give up his reality for a more approved one.

I have to be like that therapist. I have to sit in a room with the dark version of reality my mind generates and allow it to be itself…but maintain a certain detachment from it. It isn’t me. There’s an entire universe outside of that metaphorical room, full of light and dark, too complex for words.

Diagnose Me

~ Lori Lynne ~ 2 Comments

There’s someone in my life who is starting to dig deeper into their neurodivergence. Whatever diagnosis might fit–adult ADHD, bipolar II, something else–they want it. They want it so they can try associated treatments that haven’t been available to them before. They want new items to add to the list of things that might help them, a list that is all they have to cling to on some hard days. They want to get at what might be standing in the way of doing what they need to do to improve their other conditions.

When I was taking psychopharmacology in grad school, many of my fellow students had a lot of negative feelings about diagnosis in mental health. They didn’t like the idea of putting people into boxes. They felt certain diagnoses were given too freely and caused more harm than good. And both of these things are valid concerns.

But here’s my own experience–the right diagnosis was life-changing for me. Until I was diagnosed with bipolar II, I spent more than a decade being treated with medicines that were ineffective at best and dangerous at worst (for example, many antidepressants have unfortunate effects on a bipolar person). After being diagnosed, I started to be treated with medicines that, while they didn’t fix everything, were far more on target. Having the diagnosis also gave me a language for the things I had been experiencing and made them a little less scary. It validated what I’d been going through and gave more opportunities to seek new methods of treatment. It empowered me.

I hope this new seeker finds a way to get the screenings and evaluation they need (no easy task, these days, if you aren’t rich). I celebrate the insight they’ve reached about themselves and their desire to address it. And I pray that diagnosis will be a useful tool for them; one that opens doors.

The Parable of the Cursed Axe

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

So there I was, playing my old-fashioned dungeon crawler computer game when I should have been doing paperwork between counseling sessions. My character had survived and prospered long enough to have excellent armor, strength and health, but I was still wielding a lowly dagger. So I was pleased to find an axe, and picked it up, even though I knew some weapons were cursed.

On the next floor of the dungeon, I found myself surrounded by orcs. They aren’t too strong in this game, which is why they travel in large packs. So I was surprised when my attacks on the first orc seemed ineffective. Maybe I’d better switch back to my dagger…but when I tried to drop it, I saw the dreaded message: You can’t. It appears to be cursed. I was stuck with my axe. Checking my inventory, I realized it was minus-2 power. Ugh. This orc pack was going to take a while.

I’ll get to my metaphor soon. Honest.

Then, a rust monster appeared. With every hit, this feared being damages your weapons and armor. My minus-two axe became minus-three, seven…minus-twenty by the time I managed to kill the thing. I was now fighting the swarm of orcs with what amounted to a shapeless hunk of iron too heavy to lift. But I couldn’t put it down.

Wielding a cursed weapon sucks. But we’ve all done it, haven’t we? Haven’t we had a response, or a coping mechanism, that has become ineffective at best and destructive at worst, but we just can’t put it down? We swing it helplessly at the problems around us, unable to pick up a healthier method even if we know of one. We have trouble accepting that our old weapon isn’t working, hasn’t been working for a while, and is never going to work again.

Addiction is one example, of course. We wield our drug or behavior of choice to the point of self-destruction. But there are so many other cursed weapons out there, and some of these became part of our arsenal when we were very young. If we learned to shut down, avoidance becomes our default response and is difficult to change. If we learned angry confrontation as the go-to reaction, that’s our cursed weapon. If we learned to please and placate others, we hack our way to a lifetime of inauthenticity.

What are your weapons? Are they working? If they’re not, can you put them down? Or are they cursed, cursed in a way you can’t uncurse without magic?

Brick and Acid

~ Lori Lynne ~ Leave a comment

There’s a huge brick sitting on my chest. My stomach feels as if it’s trying to eat itself. I jump at the slightest sound. The cause: my dog has been sick. Nothing too catastrophic, it seems, since she is better than yesterday. We just came back from the vet where they drew some blood for tests.

Anyone would be anxious when their beloved pet is ill–but my spouse, unlike me, has been sleeping at night. He seems to be able to draw a deep breath. I’m obsessively listening for every tiny sound the dog makes, at every hour of the day and most hours of the night. I did catch two hours of sleep last night, and I am grateful for that much.

My limbic system, the part of the nervous system responsible for sensing and reacting to threats, is hypersensitive. It always has been, and it got worse when the bipolar disorder came along. Abusing drugs that relaxed me, and thus neglecting to exercise the parts of my psyche that manage anxiety, probably didn’t help either.

The crisis is over for the time being. She’s feeling better and eating again. But tell my limbic system that…I know that tonight, and probably several nights after that, will have me straining my ears for the tiniest clue, the tiniest sound that might mean she’s throwing up or having trouble breathing or being abducted by aliens. And my sleep debt, already large this last week, will grow and grow.

I hear my poet and writer friends talk about serious stresses going on in their lives, and I wonder how they manage to write through it…how do they focus on anything else when the brick is pressing so hard and the acid is so sharp?