Retire the Bouncing Blogger? Not Yet
So, I had a weird but positive experience with this blog recently. I was busy schmoozing folks in a certain ogranization for work, when I got mail from the Admin. Assistant inside the company. He told me he'd google'd me and checked out some ALL of my blogs, including this one, and replied in more or less the following fashion:"I think you're really brave to be upfront about your condition. No one knows but my shrink and I would be really scared if anyone at work knew. I don't know how they'd treat me or if they'd figure out ways to fire me. I've never talked to a fellow patient - do you think we could meet sometime and talk about meds and stuff?"
Absolutely, I replied, and we set a date, but it started me to thinking: should I really be as out there as I am with all this? After all, I'm a writer, which is fine if I just write fiction and hide in my little garret. But I write PR and marketing copy and all kinds of goofy stuff for companies that want CLEAN high-profiles, not messy crazy ones. As a client and friend recently pointed out, "your business is PR, so to a degree, you gotta be squeaky-clean yourself."
With everyone and their dog out there googling potential hires or scouring the Internet looking for people's posts with Deep Content, you'd think I'd wise up and stop telling people I'm a manic-depressive, live and global like I do.
But the way i figure it - it's just too damn late for me to hide. And besides, there are folks out there like that A.A., who find me and figure out that they're not the ONLY BiPolar kid who isn't drooling in a gutter somewhere. (Been there, but now *there's* a story I might not repeat too often.)
posted by by gregoryp(tm) aka Gregory Pleshaw @ 10:47 AM
2 Comments:
bipolar disorder should be viewed akin to other things that used to be considered shameful in our society -- say, homosexuality or having a drop of non-lily-white blood in one's heritage. we should not have to be ashamed of these things, or hide them in the closet! bipolar disorder: we're born with it, we've got it, and it doesn't make us bad people.
Oy! I relate -- I mean, I talk about my ocd online so power to you for doing the same with bipolar!
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