Backseat Wisdom

world traveller & independent scholar

[backseat-wisdom-blog]

Part of the whole being treated for a major mental illness is losing the ability to take part in many of the activities I used to adore... There are no more nights spent out adventuring and dancing until the sun comes up; mind altering substances leave me hungover for days on end and I now need to ensure I never go for too long without some substantial food. And so I've learned to enjoy the quieter joys in life. Puzzles with my mom and funny videos with my little brother.. Fun is no longer loud and fast for me, it's slow and serene and easy. And you know, at the end of the day, I don't even feel like I'm missing out. Rather, I've just come to evolve into another season of my life. Neither better or worse than the last, just different. 🎶 Full Moon - The Black Ghosts #thisisit #loveyourlife #letsgetlost #mentalhealth #bipolar

[backseat-wisdom-blog]

"Direct your eye inward, and you'll find a thousand regions in your mind yet undiscovered... be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought." - Henry David Thoreau That indeed, is the biggest deal. 🎶 Eve - The Paper Kites #thisisit #loveyourlife #letsphilosophize #mentalhealth #bipolar

[backseat-wisdom-blog]

[backseat-wisdom-blog]

Can't get enough of that contrast. 🎶 Everyday People - Sly & Family Stone #thisisit #loveyourlife #earthday #bipolarmother #bipolardaughter (at Drumheller, Alberta)

[backseat-wisdom-blog]

"The past few years have seen me in ever-increasing flights and falls of mood, my mind at first lit up with flashes of color, currents of electric insight, sudden elation, and then flooded with black and bloody thoughts that throw me face-down onto my living room floor, a swelling despair pressing outward from the center of my chest, threatening to shatter my ribs." Reading Marya Hornbacher's words on a sunlight afternoon; homemade kombucha at my hand and my antipsychotics having settled themselves into my brains chemistry; I can almost pretend that these words don't pertain to me... Almost, but not quite. 🎶 The Rains - Henry Jamison #thisisit #loveyourlife #letsgetlost #bipolar #maryahornbacher (at Drumheller, Alberta)

[backseat-wisdom-blog]

Man, that ever emphasized need for crazy high levels of protein in our diets is straight up bullshit. I haven't eaten much more than fruit and vegetables for a year now.. And after all the plethora of tests I went through to figure out what the heck was going on with me; before I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder; they found that my body was in optimum health. They're feeding us bullshit in with their 'food guides'. 🎶 Tired As Fuck - The Staves #thisisit #loveyourlife #letsphilosophize #food #bipolar

[backseat-wisdom-blog]

I am a philosopher because no other path will do me, no other path exists which allows me the freedom to wander as I do. I am a philosopher because my greatest passion is the essential nature of being; of the human condition. Not the exacting quality which society aims to impose; to condition; through tradition, social etiquette, and 'objective laws'. I seek trails yet untamed because I realize that I can never flourish in a field which adheres to any one code that is not my own... I wish to help, to make people's lives better, to change the world. And yet I know I'd be promising myself to a slow and silent death if I became a cop, a lawyer, a doctor or even a social worker. I'm a philosopher because I'd choose no existence to one of having my hands incessantly tied by 'the system'. I won't accept values fed to me without a thorough examination. I make life hard for myself, I know that. And yet I'd have it no other way. The affect of being, in its most essential form, captures my curiosity and presses me forward even in the depths of my bipolar despair... I am a philosopher because I'll never grow weary of this intellectual wandering which absorbs me so. This is just it for me. 🎶 Basic Instinct - The Acid #thisisit #loveyourlife #letsphilosophize #letsgetlost #bipolar

[backseat-wisdom-blog]

Bipolar probs is catching yourself in the middle of a journal entry wondering if you did it because of your disorder or if it's just your natural temperament. 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️ Guess I'll never know. 🎶 Chateau - Angus & Julia Stone #thisisit #loveyourlife #letsgetlost #mentalhealth #bipolar

[backseat-wisdom-blog]

3 years into this adulting business and the greatest truth I've come to realize is that life is anything but fair. It's futile to fight it, to complain about it; the only worthwhile path is to come to terms with it. To enjoy the rain and the shine for what they are, two aspects of the same life; impossible without the polarity of the other. 🎶 All The Pretty Girls - Kaleo #thisisit #loveyourlife #bipolar #mentalhealth

[backseat-wisdom-blog]

So, guys, I went to my very first psychiatrist appointment yesterday and received a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder. Immediately I felt relief upon finally having my suspicions confirmed but then the dark shadow of despair managed to overwhelm that brief glimpse of light. It's all of a sudden very very real now... Upon researching the side effects of the medication they want to put me on... Well, I'm back on the panic bus again; this time loaded down with a plethora of new baggage to add to the old. In all honesty, sometimes I don't particularly love this life and all that I can really say to that now is that at least I'm still doin' it here. I'm sorry this isn't more motivational or lighthearted but, again, this sort of grieving is a part of the process too I suppose. #thisisit #mentalillness #bipolar

[somethoughtseeds]

[philosophybits]

“Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.”

— Francis Bacon, “Of Studies”, Essays

[philosophybits]

“It is essential to practice reading as an art.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals

[backseat-wisdom-blog]

Maybe it's because my own personal internal environment has always been so vibrantly vast and ever changing that I find it so sweetly soothing when the external weather resembles the flavor of my internal. I'm certainly no stranger to the swamping mystery that fog manages to sweep over everything in its wake. How delicious I find it. 🎶 Holocene - Bon Iver #thisisit #mentalhealth (at St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador)

[futilereality]

[purplebuddhaquotes]

“Do not mock a pain you haven’t endured.”

—

[thirdity]

“To have doubted one’s own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., “Ideals and Doubts”, Illinois Law Review, vol 10 (1915)