The Sunshine Award Nomination
Blog Awards: It Feels Great To Be Awarding Those Who Deserve Recognition For Their Passions.
This entry was posted on 12 June 2012, Tuesday
The Sunshine Award Nomination
These are the instructions for earning this award…
***Link the award to the person who gave it to you . . .
the great greths
the unbearable lightness of being me
http://greatgreths.wordpress.com/
***Answer the questions that come with it
***Pass it along to 10 people and let them know they have received it
Here are the questions and MY answers:
1.Favorite Color: purple
2.Favorite Animal: cats (large & small)
3.Favorite number: 7
4.Favorite Non-alcoholic drink: arizona diet iced tea
5.Facebook or Twitter: both: facebook-feel closer to people/twitter-keeps me connected to the world
6.My Passion: creating with words in whatever form possible
7.Prefer getting or giving presents: giving (more exciting)
8.Favorite pattern: mandalas
9.Favorite Day of the Week: satudrday (brit comedies on pbs)
10.Favorite Flower: diasy (white for innocence)
In no particular order my nominations for The Sunshine Award are:
1. http://mackenziesdragonsnest.wordpress.com/ : shawn – for believing in the mystical creatures that are invisible to most and to giving them a voice and recognition. to the dragon keeper. long live the wee people, the faires, the unicorns, the dragons and all their other mystical friends. may they all be safe and protected from the dangers from some of mankind. your writing, among other topics, spreads the word of their continuing tales.
2. http://purpleowltree.wordpress.com/ : purple owl tree – to your enthusiasm. to defending causes when the meanness of others in the world try to bully and condemn them. i am speaking of your recent stand to come forward and support gay and lesbians rights to equality and to condemn those who use any means they can to defame them. also, to your all around bravery. i have enjoyed our exchanges and look forward to there continuation.
3. http://rippleeffects.wordpress.com/ : for thorough love of films and your enthusiasm for the technologies that have through the years caused the face of films to change. also, yo your love of all the film greats and your critiques hat you share so that others may lern and debate you.
4. http://galaxybounce02rabbithole.wordpress.com/ : songs of the sirens – you are strong. i believe you can face anything. your blog helps to take away the stigma that there is something wrong with being different. no one is normal. we are who we are and everyone is different and deserves to be treated like an individual. all things will be as you wish them to be. just believe. you’ve got the strength.
5. http://ontheplumtree.wordpress.com/ : niamh clune – for bringing spirit to those who hear your songs and your enriching singing voice. to all the inspirational words you have written. to creating the character of skyla so those who discovrer her can believe in their own imaginations as a safe place to go to where all will be alright. to creating a place where a book like Every Child is Entitled to Innocence can be published and offered to the world. and for caring about all the children of the world.
6. http://talesoftherapy.wordpress.com/ : you make me laugh. i smile when i see the humorous animated animal haiku. your therapy sessions crack me up. they are so relateable to my own crazy therapy sessions. i just love your blog. my therapist wants me to laugh as often as possible and your posts are one of the things that do it for me.
7. http://lightbearernovelist.wordpress.com/ : emily guido – i’d like to see the sunshine on your smile. i have a feeling when you have the energy after all the many activities you participate in beyond your writng, you find time to laugh. i am hoping that you do. here’s another award for the enjoyable brightness of your blog.
8. http://thesecretlifeofamanicdepressive.wordpress.com/ : seaneen – being mentally interesting. that’s something to reach for. when bipolar is part of your life Il est accompli. your blog leads to some really great posts. i likr your sense of humor also. when there is such seriousnes in your life it is better to “always look on the bright side of life.” i’m breaking off into a terry gilliam movie scene here. i think you express this sentiment in your attitude. which is a great accomplishment.
9. http://http://momentswithmillie.wordpress.com/ : you brighten up my day when i see that you have liked a post that i have created. it feels good to be recognized for your hard work when being creative but i love it as i know you do yourself in you own creation with words in their many forms. you are the poet and writer of such beautiful prose and verse. i just want to give you more sunshine for your inspring work and creations.
10. http://http://myotherbookisatolstoy.wordpress.com/ : louise – i have visited your page and find i am so impressed by the choices you make to expand your artistic life. i feel so connected to many of those you have on your list of influences. there is kindred spirit connections with virginia woolf, sylvia plath, kurt vonnegut, vincent van gogh, and others that you have opened your mind to. ‘the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind’ is one of my favorite films. if you thought that was inspiring you should check out the film ‘momento’ directed by soderbergh. it’s always a joy to find someone with similar influences. gibran i read often. i prefer his work if i transfer the genders in his verse. it becomes more relateable. fitzgerald, ginsberg, salinger, capote, i could go on. great choices. reading about virginia woolf’s life from her perspective and others is also enlightening. i feel the same love and devotion to good films about the lives of artists from all areas of creating. a love of films, books, music, art (eclectic in all areas) they are all a passion. it is good they are your passions. they serve up quite an enlightening life. keep going in your direction. theatre is a great world.
i nominate you all for The Sunshine Award for i feel with what intelligence and enlightenment you are bringing into your life and ours that i hope this will only brighten your world even more.
Thank you so much Secret Keeper! What a great list to be part of.. I’m going to follow all of them immediately
WG. xx
it is fun to share the joy and sunshine. you never know how it will make someone feel. jen
WOW!!! Jen THANK YOU!!!! I’m so honored and so very happy about this award not because of the award, but because of YOU! YOU are such a special and talented person!!!! I love your blog and your writing is inspired! Totally humbled. I will thank you properly when I post the Award! Sincerely, Emily
you bring joy to my day all of the time. it is my way of trying to show you what i think of you and your talent as a writer and your generosity as a great person.i am so happy that we have met and continue to be connected. you are such a good person. peace and love jen
Thank you very much! I feel honored and humbled to be nominated for this award, and that you would think of me and my “ride” through what can be utter madness and sometimes stable madness. I thoroughly enjoy your blog when I have time to read. You have so many different interests, and everything you post reflects that you are definitely a deep thinker which I think is awesome! We need more people like you in this world right now.
you are so generous with your words. when you say “ride” through madness utter and stable, i understand. it makes for some interesting trips in your mind. “down the rabbit hole.” i am such a fan of alice in wonderland and through the looking glass. when i was a kid whenever films of these stories were on the tv i would of course watch them. my life in some unusual way felt a connectiont o such non-sense. but what an adventure. it may be difficult more than it is not but it can be enriching and it gives you depth, no matter the pain one must experience to get through it all. thank you for being there. it makes one feel less alone when one receives such kindness. jen
I am a Buddhist. It is part of the vow we hold sacred to lift people up, give them their due, and treat them kindly, with respect and compassion. Everyone is a potential Buddha in our way of faith.
I do agree with you that this disorder does make life fuller and richer somehow. It is like being on acid without the hallucinations sometimes. Usually manic episodes cause that. But I am here to de-stigmatize and speak out about the disorder. I have worked my way through the shame and the guilt, and I think it is high time that people who are mentally ill receive fair and equal treatment. We are, after all, members of our societies, and we should be treated no differently than so-called “normal” people. Although I have my suspicions that there are not any out there
i agree with you about the normal people. i think that just is a rumour to keep everyone thinking they have an expectation that they could possibly be normal if they just behave in a certain manner. it is great to stand up proudly for who you are. having bipolar or any other problem with your mental capabilities should not place you in the category of being a lesser person for it. bipolar has great advantages particularly when it comes to energy and creativity. now, admittedly i do need to get more sleep. i am finding that i am getting really exhausted lately. also, my therapist told me the other day that i am showing signs of being rather addicted to of all things my computer. i cannot stay away from it. it’s because i am always writing or reading on it. or making comments or responding to comments. or writing emails. it do a lot of research and for some reason i find a need to post a blog post everyday. i was trying to do the challenge but i screwed up on one of the days and posted to early and forgot to do another post later that day. but i find it is something that i like to do everyday. i, also, do my other writing: poems, screenplay that i am writing, an older novel that i am trying to work on again and decide whether i want to eventually adapt into a screenplay. so there is the depression and suicidal thinking. that seems to only happen the night before i have my therapy sessions which are on tuesdays and thursday. like clockwork, drop off into a depression etc the eve of those days. my therapist to me she was developin a complex that she way making me feel that way. she said, it’s really just what comes up in therapy sessios that sets me off prior to therapy days. we get really intense. i don’t often remember what we talk about. it’s the racing thoughts and my short term memory problems. she tells me i tell her a lot more than i realize that i do. so i would say i don’t feel stigmatized. and i am not ashamed about going to therapy. it’s just usually the initial shock of getting the diagnosis that throws you. then i just investigate what it all means and come to terms with it. society just needs to get a grip on people who are different but then isn’t everybody different. and who are they to judge anyone. society is so f@%ked up anyway. no one can agree on anything. mentally ill. physically ill. what’s the differenct? both are happening in the same body. people get weirded out if you are physically ill no matter what esp. cancer or any of the physical ones that debilitate you like CP or MS or Alzheimer just to name a few. people can’t deal with anyone that is not just completely without problems or who act anything but in a non way or normal or whatever they think that is. i wouldn’t want to be normal. you don’t feel alive if you act normal. jennifer
I would much rather be “mentally interesting” than normal. I do not even know what that means. I have always been the weird kid in class (until I hit college, and then everyone was weird, I was in heaven). I do think there are advantages to being bipolar. They may not seem obvious, but creativity is a subject that has been researched in bipolars because so many of us turn out to be painters, writers, poets, entertainers, etc. We are also very charming when we want to be, and make good business people due to the charisma factor.
I do admit that when I first received the diagnosis, I fell into a deep spiral that I now call the Rabbit Hole, but as I have learned more about the disorder, how to manage it (in my case, wonderful doctors, well thought out medication, and practicing Buddhism), I have realized that there are many things that I can do that “normal” people cannot. I tend to think more abstractly, and less pragmatically, I can write forever and have it make sense (sometimes), I think that I am more creative than so-called normal people, I paint, write, love oil pastels, sketch, can break and fix computers. Being bipolar isn’t the end of existence as I had once thought. Now, I feel like everyone with a mental challenge should be proud of who they are, and who they can become. Everyone on this planet is here for a reason, and often that reason is to teach each other about basic respect and compassion. And, no I do not feel alive when being normal, I feel like I am betraying a part of me.
bipolar is a gift in disguise. when my therapist read from my mental health charts last year, it was the first time i had asked any of my therapists to do that, the two of us were shocked to find bipolar as a dignosis on my chart. it had been on their for years. it went way back. but she couldn’t track down who actually put it on my chart in the first place. no one ever told me. my therapist tried to explain why she thought no one said anything: “they like to keep diagnoses from the clients. it just ends up disturbing them.” dsturbing them. how about pissing them off when they find out by pure accident. if i hadn’t asked, i wouldn’t be aware of the bipolar now. after investigating what bipolar II was, reading and buying lots of books, it made my life and my behavior make a great deal more sense. i think i may have told you. i know i hve written on my blog about it. i was fortunate to have the first book i read on bipolar be written by dr. kay redfield jamison, titled: “Touching Fire.” it is all about the artistic temperament and divine madness. she goes into the examining of famous artists lives from all the fields: poets, authors, painters etc. it was so informative and explained the behaviors. then i moved onto more clinical research. the one catch in all of this is my present therapist and my s/o believe that he diagnosis is true but my last therapis told my psychiatrist that she didn’t think i had bipolar. so now my psychiatrist doesn’t believe it b/c she hs never witnessed it in me. well, she has. but as my s/o says: “she sees you for 30 minutes once a month. what is she going to see then?” i usually hypomanc or depressed or not in any mood when i see her. as for my last therapist, i was always depressed an suicidal with her. she never saw the hypomanic side. that mood came out after she abandoned me suddenly with less than 2 weeks notice. i sunk into a depression and felt suicidal and all of a sudden i went into a state of complete hypomania. that lasted for what seemed like months. eventually i crashed. that was awful. sometime after this i started up doing my blogs. i’ve since narrowed them down to one on wordpress, this one. and one on tumblr. this month of June i have only missed one day of posting. somedays i have posted up to 5 posts. i love the energy and the not needing to sleep. it does eventually catch up to you. but i am able to do most anything with out needing to go to bed. now i ust need to focus more on my writing of my screenplay, memoir of therapy with my last therapist, work on my poetry collections, and work on a novel i wrote a while back. i need to decide if i want it to stay as a novel or if i want to adapt it into a screenplay.
you are like me, you have many creative interests. painting is something i wish i had the space to do but what i’d want to express, i do not feel i have it in me. it is great that you have this creativity. and you fix computers. i know the operations but the body of the computer, inside and out, i don’t want to break it. being mechanical is something i use to be able to do. now i understand the logical language of the computer. i am logical. what do you think of the racing thoughts? i start talking sometimes with my s/o or therapist and i feel like i’ve done coke. but i don’t need stimulants. the only thing i will not do again is to take psych meds. since i got off of them i have lost over 85 to 90 pounds. i was always thin until i started taking antidepressants. also, i was always active but it didn’t make a difference. i couldn’t sleep b/c my thoughts wouldn’t shut up. now i am on a cocktail of mostly homeopathic medication plus a muscle relaxant and something i take for panic. the combo lets me sleep soundly. also i read and then listen to music off my mp3 walkman w/ ear buds in and music set on a sleep timer. also i play with my cats too before i sleep. schroader, one our girl kitties, sleeps next to my face on the edge of my pillow as i drift off. haven’t slept so well before the meds i take now.
wow, i have gone on. really time for bed. have therapy at 1am tuesday w/ a physical therapy appt. following. so you take care. hope to here from you when you find the time to write. peace, jennifer
I keep losing my replies. They are there one moment, and then gone. Maybe my computer needs a reboot. It is on all the time. And, i do not break computers intentionally. They just do not seem to like me sometimes. Maybe if I stopped naming them HAL after the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey? Anyhow, i am rebooting, and then we’ll see if my replies stay out. I have replied three times.
i think it is a bipolar thing losing comments. it happens to me all the time. also, writing online is does not make my keyboard happy. it is literally like pulling teeth to get it to show all the letters of the alphabet that i type. HAL (what # is he?) is cool in the second film 2010 space odyssey. maybe like ne you have telekenetic powers around everything techno. if i get extremely stressed out all the devices in our house go wonky. i often copy what i have written before i post something. i lost an entire post that took me several hours of writing in the flow. when i went to add illustrations, after the first one popped up in HTML it read at the bottom of the writing box i had 1400+ words but there were no scrolling on the right side. i looked again at the number and it read i had “0″ words. talk about freaking out. wtf. i looked throughout wordpresses guts to my blogsite and i couldn’t find the post. i didn’t know what to do. then it occurred to me that maybe i didn’t save the draft. but i always do that. well, i did eventually find the post by looking below the writing box. there were several saved drafts. that’s when i had to decide which was the right one. was i relieved. it turned out the second one i checked was the complete post. that felt awful losing what i had written from deep down inside. but i still haven’t learned to write my work someplace else.
I think we may have the same affliction. All electronics go all wonky around me. I once asked an IBM repair guy if a person’s magnetic field could affect electronics, and he said yes. So, we just have strong auras
I once lost an entire 20 page term paper, when my computer crashed. I freaked out! It was due the next day, and I only had about half of it saved on one of those 31/2 inch disks. Obviously, this was some time ago
I am certain Bipolar is a gift that is deeply under cover. I find that I have had to learn to assert myself to keep the doctors from running me over, and no to let petty things bother me so much, and I have found that my writing has become richer.
I am going to have to read “Touched by Fire.” I have it, but I have not read it, yet. I would also recommend her memoir “An Unquiet Mind: a Memoir of Moods and Madness.” It was the first thing I read on the subject of Bipolar Disorder, and I found myself in those pages. You probably will too. That woman is my hero. She managed even with all the difficulty of undiagnosed Bipolar to get an MD, and work as a psychiatrist. She has devoted her life to researching various mood disorders and their causes, symptoms and treatments.
And, yes, you too can paint. I usually do it the most when I am feeling a little manic and do not feel like writing, Try acrylics or watercolor (a bit difficult until you get the hang of it), also Pastels which are like really fat, highly pigmented soft crayons. They are really fun. I just decided one day a few years ago that I needed a hobby, so I took up painting. I was already keeping journals (since age 12), so I need something else to do. So, I figured my Dad’s mom was a painter, so maybe I got a painting gene from her
Well, not so much, but I can hold my own. My paintings are just as Bipolar as I am: either really good or really awful.
you will love “Touched By Fire.” i love her writing so much that i think i bought most if not all of her books relating to her experieces with bipolar. youtube has a great collction of her lectures that i have listened to also. i have started a lot of her book but get sideracked. i read a lot of books at a time. my wandering mind leaps after new ideas i want to investigate all the time. i do have “an unquiet mind” and have begun to read it. also, recently i tated to read er book on “exubrbance” i think that is the title or what it is about.
the drawing or painting or usingb black ink on white paper all interes me. it’s just a matter of getting me away from the computer. and now thati got a new device in the Kindle Touch, i am getti really engrossed in that. i have had the kindle for just over a week d already i added an app called a Notepad. i’ve already written 3 poems on it. need o transpose them onto th computer to add them to my poetry collections. i love writing poetry on the kindle notepad. my fingers move so fast and my mind really flows when i am using it. back to drawing, i’d like to do something abstract or surreal. that i what i use to do. i would start out by drawing something in pencil, then outline in black ink & erase the pencil. the last phase was to add color using paint pens. i had a thing about crcles of all sizes that we develop into something very meditative and gave one feeling of infinity, i gave my best painting away to someone i don’t know any longer. it drives me crazy sometime that i don’t have it any longer. it was the best painting i’ve ever done. do you ever regret giving someone something meaningful to you and then they trsh your relationship and you’ve lost something special forever. thank drives me crazy sometimes because you can never do it or have it again.
well, i better consider gping to bed. it was a long day that got started all wrong plus my therapist cancelled on me again. she’s been doing that quite a lot over thepast two months. wednesday is a day to watch wimbledon tennis & chill. maybe i’ll open up “an unquiet mind” and recheck it out. it might be just what i need to hear right now. i feel like i’ve been writing for the past 24 hrs. i love to write but i must reat my fingers and my mind. need to prepare to see my favorite doc on thursday. it’s a long day. if my therapist is back i see her & my chiropractor & my doc. then rest. but now i need to catch up on my sleep. have a great day. write soon & so will i. jennifer
The only thing i have ever really regretted was giving away the Big Blue Book of AA to someone who said they wanted to stop drinking, and start attending meetings. So i gave her my Big Book, and she never stopped drinking, lost her job, got evicted. I feel like I wasted a kindness on someone who either wasn’t ready or had not intention in the first place. I could have given it to someone who would have used it to improve their life.
Reblogged this on A Bipolar Journey Through The Rabbit Hole and commented:
Honored and humbled to be considered for the award nomination. You are a special person and I hope that you will never let anyone tell you anything different.
you are so divinely wonderful. i wonder if we visit the same rabbit hole? thank you for your words of encouragement. i do need them and i do appreciate them. jen
It is a possibility. I mean, how many rabbit holes out there big enough for grown ups