A Mood Watch Retrospective

On another blog, since discontinued, I had a category entitled "Mood Watch." In those posts I made an effort to track my moods, something that persons with bipolar disorder are often encouraged to do. I've decided to incorporate them here, using the dates of the original posts, so that they seem to antedate the beginnings of this blog. The first such post is here.

It took a while to transfer these posts, partly because there were rather a lot of them, and partly because I was careful to date stamp them precisely -- not just with the month, day, and year but also with the exact time of publication. The exact time can be useful because it usually provides a clue as to how well I was sleeping, and good sleep hygiene (which is to say going to bed and waking up at about the same time, getting sufficient sleep, etc.) is an important element in managing the disorder.

As I went through these old posts, two things stood out. The first was how few there were, considering that I had composed them over a period of about two years. It just isn't a lot of fun to keep track of one's moods. The second was how many encouraging comments the posts received. Without them I would probably have ceased the practice long before I did.

As to whether I'll resume these posts, I can't yet say. I probably will describe what the disorder feels like subjectively, particularly the depressions, which for me are much more frequent than the hypomanic episodes. Indeed, I haven't had a significant hypomanic episodes in years.

In fact, it's hard to know exactly what shape this blog will take. Like any writing project it eats time and it's not exactly a comfortable sensation to put so much of myself out there for people to read. Still, I regard it as a useful service; and if you find it worthwhile, I'd sure appreciate your leaving comments. They're likely to be one of the more important things that keeps me going.