Anniverse

Last March, I started writing this blog. I was beginning to feel better (I thought), and I had some stuff to say. For example, I noted that my blood serum level for lithium was on the low end of therapeutic but that Chris said it was fine when combined with lamictal. How wrong was that!

The onset of mania often escapes notice, masquerading as just feeling better. Looking back, I see that last April marked the peak of blog-writing, coming in at 21 posts. I made a little graph to test a hypothesis: did the number of blog posts for each month indicate vacillating moods? The results are in. Last April (21), September (14), and this February (10) look like spikes in an otherwise downward trend. I should say, however, that May's posts were fewer than April's, but they were prolix. It's an illustration of how mood works in me. More posts mean more to say, but fewer posts can still mean pressured speech and a desire to get out all of the stuff I have to say, all at once.

I don't know what counts as the onset of mania and what just counts as feeling better. I don't know how to measure how I feel, even, as I wrote some posts that seemed lighter in tone because I was hiding my misery so that no one stopped me from fulfilling my plans. When mood is the question, nothing becomes an answer.