Well Bottom Blues

Ten years ago, just as medication was beginning to rein in my outrageous and dangerous bipolar mania, I quit a job that almost broke me and fled into the park.

It was a contract gig with Citibank with a distributed team that stretched from Poland to China. “Protected time” for meetings was 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. and again 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. Central Time. The software testers in China I was working with were so incompetent I insisted on being invited to their test review meetings, which started at 10:00 p.m. Central Time.

It was not just the remote testers; the Citibank PMO was pretty fucked up as well.  Many of the line of business people we were assigned to as business analysts were disconnected or disinterested, leaving us to flounder in decision making meetings. My manager was terrible.

I was about to transition from a more modern diagnosis of  mentally ill towards a good old-fashioned nervous breakdown. So I quit.

The atypical antipsychotic Risperidone tamped down the mania and depression, but it was walking everyday in New Orleans City Park under the old growth live oaks, along the remnants of Bayou Metairie, that saved me.

I titrated off Risperidone due to the complete creative/literary aphasia it caused–I’m not only stopped writing but I struggled to read closely into difficult literature, especially poetry. My medical chart says “in remission” but that’s a relative and not an absolute state. I still experience cycling through hypomania and a mild depression called anhedonia.

Hypomania goes mostly into writing and reading, also into rebuildinv the garden that had gone to weeds and various things to do around the house. Andhedonia is spent on scrolling, avoiding anything from the news or other serious reading on social media, are watching YouTube videos on distracting subjects. It passed the time

Walking in the park, either in the old live oak grove or Couterie Forest Arboretum, is a key to managing my mental state. It can calm me while burning off excess energy and lift me out of anhedonia.

The Japanese call this forest bathing (shinrin-yoku). I can’t recommend it highly enough as a tonic to the near constant stress that we’re living under, or anyone struggling with mental health issues.

It helped save my life 10 years ago, and might just help you get through this horrorshow we’re living in.