Absorb Life Holistically

One of the side effects of being bipolar is that many of your senses are heightened. For example, there are times when I will smell gas on fire, when there is none, or a knock at the door when no one is there. As a kid, seeing flashes of people out of the corner of my eye made me believe my house was haunted (and kept me scared of the dark for most of my life). Even feeling hands on my leg or as if someone was in the bed with me freaked me out.

Of course, being me, I swore I had super powers. I knew I could see, hear, smell and feel better than anyone. (Taste was one I never spent much time with, dunno why) I remember things in images. When I used to take tests, I could see the specific page the answer was on, and I would imagine myself reading that page. Even now, I can remember weird facts and places, even as I forget the most mundane things (I have no idea where my keys are).

I know I had super powers.

I spent time looking in the mirror at each millimeter of my face and body. When I see people in photos I will absorb the photo, memorizing the crease under the right eye, or the slight dimple that only appears when the person is half-smiling. I note the curve of the forehead and the shape of the nose. The nape of the neck. The slope of the shoulder.

Its not just people.

I will notice the smallest spot on my dogs snout, where hair doesnt seem to grow, or the change in her skin tone depending on her level of activity. When I go to movies I spend time looking at the entire screen, trying to understand where the characters were coming from, why the set was built in the way it was. Where the story was going. Could I see the monster before it jumped out of the tree?

Over the years its has become not just visual. I try to observe emotion and body language where I can. Sighed just a little too long? IM responses are really short? Perhaps you are talking excitedly, but your eyes are tired.

Often I mis cues (especially in terms of relationships and romantic interest. Man, do I miss that stuff), but many times I am right. Which in many ways, is awesome.

But there is the opposite side. I see all my negatives. I see all the negatives of people around me. Friends will tell me how a particular woman that I am hanging out with is super hot, and I will see the white hairs and the standoffishness. People will show me what they are working on, and I can see the holes, and why something cant work before I spend time worrying about if it can.

Growing up, I used to joke that if I brought home a report card full of A’s with a single A minus, the conversation at home would be about the A minus. My parents spent more time discussing the things I could improve on, than the things I doing well.

In my first couple of positions, and certainly at my company, that was the standard. You are expected to do a great job. Not a good job. Because you are expected to excel, lets spend our time on correcting the errors. Ive never much believed in bonuses or commission plans, after all your motivation should be perfection, not hitting some (semi)arbitrary numbers or goals.

In the past year or so, I have started to change how I look at things. I still see everything. I try to use that to understand the holes and the positive directions we are moving in. I have stopped spending time in the mirror looking at me (although, on occasion, I still do it), and when I do, I try and force myself to look at the positives. At work, I have started to do the same. In all situations, there are positive elements and negative elements and spending time on any specific element is not holistic. It is not a complete approach. It is a failure waiting to happen.

Now as a bit of a tangent (I promise to come back to center), each year, it seems that I am inspired in a large way by a single individual. In 2008 it was Jeffrey Kalmikoff, and in this past year (as a whole), as I think about, it kinda surprised me, but it was Michael Galpert. Neither of these guys said or did anything specific TO me, it was more how they conducted their lives, the struggles they dealt with, etc. In fact, I have a pretty good idea who might be my inspiration/muse for 2010, but I will wait a year to see if I am right.

Last year, one of the things that MSG did that I really liked is that he recorded his interactions with the world. Either a quick video or a photo.

I dont do that. I see nothing but negative in photos of me. There is a reason that about 15 pictures of me exist in the world. (BTW, I used to say that one day I would be rich and famous, so less pictures meant they would be more valuable. Always squeezing a dollar out of 15 cents…)

So, as I start to try and see myself holistically, I am going to start recording my interactions (and allowing others to record my interactions) with the world. I am going to try this coming year to take a photo of myself every day. I have started to play with DailyBooth, which is wonderful (except I want an RSS feed of my own photos *AHEM*).

I might spend a bit more time in front of the video camera. After all, I do have a lot of things to talk about with the launch of a new company, and other cool stuff that I will talk about later… (that, my friends, is an admission that I have nothing else interesting to talk about. Yet.)

Its all about absorbing life holistically. Let the absorption begin.