This is Part 2 in a 5-Part Series:
I recently came across the poetry of Nayyirah Waheed. I
follow her on Instagram and she posts beautiful, bite-sized poetry. Reading her
work makes me want to write poetry, too.
At the beginning of the month (September 2016), I felt
the stirrings of mania. There were no spending sprees, nor hypersexuality, or
racing thoughts. Those are my typical symptoms. This time I only noticed two
changes: disturbances in my sleep and heightened creativity and productivity.
When I was manic in 2015, I incorporated a life coaching
company and a social justice curricular consulting company. I was so excited to
go into business for myself. I mean, why not? I had all these great ideas until
the mania dissipated. After I came down in 2015, I spent months recovering and
settling back into my homeostasis. The two businesses were the last things on
my mind.
Yet here I find myself, in September 2016, dusting off
the life coaching company and developing curricula for workshop presentations.
For the first week of September 2016, I feverishly researched and wrote, and
consulted, and designed. At first, I thought it was normal creative frenzy, but
when I didn’t sleep one night, I knew I was teetering into familiar territory. Mania is defined by excess. I was doing too much.
Here are five haikus I wrote to process the mania.
Here are five haikus I wrote to process the mania.
I
*Jessie Spano from Saved By The Bell
II
Wrote a business
plan.
Conducted a survey
too:
self-care
consulting.
III
I’m intentional
about self-care
coping skills.
Sleep. Breathe.
Eat. Shower.
IV
Be in the moment.
Try to calm the
energy.
Breathe, breathe,
breathe deeply.
V
Sleep escapes me,
{sigh}.
Too many creative
thoughts.
Can I just press
“pause”?
Tune in tomorrow for part three in the series...
