Lent 2024: A respite from blogging

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday: the beginning of the Lenten season.

There have been some years when I have observed Lent on this blog.  The first time, in 2006, I refrained from posting at all.  This blog was two years old then and it was a commitment to keep the content fresh and poppin'.  So no blogging for seven weeks presented a dire temptation to write something, to write anything.  But I believe that I came through it a better person, and a better writer at that.

Then two years ago I felt the need to participate in Lent again.  But this time I went in the dire opposite direction.  After leaving Reidsville in 2016 I let this site lapse a bit (for over a year and a half!) while I was getting things in my personal life taken care of.  I like to think that I came back to this blog a different and better individual.  But the damage was done and this site still hasn't regained the audience it once enjoyed.  Still, I write.  And I was writing with passion for Lent 2022: endeavoring to make one post each day during the season.  In the end there were 47 posts made from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday... and it was TOUGH!  But it was something that I needed to do.  God showed me that He hasn't let the gift He has given me lapse because of lack of use.  That was something I needed to see, and I am thankful that He bore me through it.

Now we are on the doorstep of Lent 2024.  And once again I am going to give up blogging for the next seven or so weeks.  It's going to take something dire to bring me back to this site until then (Joe Biden resigning or being removed from the presidency will probably not cut it).  I won't be actively looking for anything to post about.  But this is time when I will be writing.  I'm committing myself to finishing at least one new chapter for my book each week.  Hopefully more than that if the Muse is feeling kind.  In the past month I've written three major chapters.  I've let confidants read some of the work so far and without exception they wildly approved and said that they want to know more about my life story.  I'll give you this teaser: "When you're driving a few hundred miles to banish demons, you can find most of what you need at Walmart."

So I'm more or less going into "radio silence" on this blog.  Probably not so much on Twitter however: that will remain an occasional chronicle of my musings and observations.  I'm also trying to see if I can achieve having a thousand followers.  I want to think that it's possible by doing it the old fashioned way: "we uuuuurn it" (as John Houseman articulated the line).

Lent ends on Easter Sunday.  This year that falls on March 31st.  Which is an important date for me.  It will be my birthday and not only that but my fiftieth!  I'm facing it with pure abandon.  Too many people, especially men, treat fifty as something they must make a deal with God to avoid the ramifications of.  Me?  I'm thankful... DARN thankful... that I will have made it that far.  I should not be here writing these words.  By many accounts I should have been dead dozens of times over by now, especially by my own hand.  I have survived too much than to not be grateful to God and the people He has put into my life for helping to bring me this far along.  I don't know what the heck I'm going to blog about come Easter Sunday but I'm going to write the heck out of it.

So, that's what's going to be up for the next few weeks.  I won't have died (you'll know if if I do though, that is going to be posted on this site) or otherwise abandoned The Knight Shift.  I'm just focusing on spiritual matters more for the next month and a half or so.  And maybe as before, I'll come out of it a better person.

See y'all in forty days.

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The Knight Shift turns TWENTY!

 Twenty years ago today, on January 2nd 2004:

"Here we go, fast and furious..."

I'll be honest: I really never thought this blog would make it past the first year or so,  It would be something for me to play around with and then I'd get bored and abandon it.

This has not happened yet.

I think The Knight Shift fulfilled a need in my life.  To actively chronicle the human condition of this one very peculiar individual.  That has been a thing of evolution, that I can't but be impressed by as I look at many of the thousands of posts I've made over the years.  Especially those early ones.  I was much more writing about politics then, for one thing.  Today, not so much.  I can put it no plainer than this: politics is one thing that I have grown bored with.  I'm more of an ideas man, not an ideologies man.  Although lately the desire to be more proactive about that has been growing in my mind.

Well here this blog is, twenty years old today.  When it began I was 29 years old, married, about to be diagnosed with a mental condition, trying to make my first movie, still full of "piss and vinegar".  Today I'm about to turn fifty, writing a book about life with that same condition, am unfortunately divorced (but still hopeful for that kind of happiness), have made a number of movies and recently started writing the story for a new one, and I think I've inadvertently become more seasoned.  The Knight Shift has touched upon all of that and more.  Including but not limited to: movie reviews, recipes, documenting a run for public office, taking on a major corporation, shared the thoughts and turmoils of being a manic depressive, took an extended respite and came back to write about being on the road across America for over a year, posted lots of pics of my miniature dachshund Tammy, shared the loss of loved ones, celebrated the gaining of new ones, and... well, you get the idea.

I'm hoping and praying that this blog will continue for another 37 years at least.  I want to write about seeing Halley's Comet for the second time in my life.  The first was a disappointment.  Would love to make up for that.  A much better appearance of Halley would make a fine place to retire this blog on.

But in the meantime I'm counting on God to continue to provide new ideas, new experiences, new people from which to draw writing inspiration from.  I'll be honest, this site took a blow after Dad passed.  I lost a lot of drive about many things.  But I like to think the old mojo is coming back.  So long as there's even just one reader, I'm going to do my best to make this a site worth visiting.  You have my promise on that.

So Happy Twentieth Anniversary to The Knight Shift!  I'm looking forward to seeing what the next twenty years will bring :-)

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Testing for un-named weekly series

It was my friend Matt Smith who first encouraged me to start a weekly video series like his own Sunday school videos.  He suggested some equipment and I've been playing around with shooting footage with my iPad Pro.  Today I tried it again, this time with a wireless lavalier microphone.

This is still VERY rough, but I thought it could be shared with y'all.  Few things from making this: the mic should be further up my shirt (crossing my arms in this muffled the sound).  And this show is in dire need of a name.  Maybe y'all can suggest one.

Anyhoo, here it is!

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Dear Elon Musk: Make Twitter usable again

This line from the 1983 movie WarGames has come to mind in the past couple of days:

Except right now it's Elon Musk instead of Dabney Coleman.  And instead of the WOPR computer the problem is that Twitter is, at the moment, complete junk.

A few years ago I embedded the timeline of my most recent tweets on this blog, in the right-hand column toward the top of the page.  It gradually came to be a great complement to the blog proper.  Instead of making a post about anything that I found interesting enough to share, I simply tweeted it and it would also come up on the blog.  It had become a "secondary spinal cord" of my humble website.

Well, as you can see, the timeline is gone.  There is just a link to my individual Twitter page and you can see some of my tweets there. I say "some" because Twitter owner Elon Musk has limited how many tweets you can see per day.  And oh yeah, you MUST have a Twitter account and be signed into it if you want to read tweets at all.

Mr. Musk, WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO US?!?

 

Musk claims that he's doing this to keep Google and ChatGPT and whatever other systems are out there from automatically sucking up information from Twitter.

What Musk has done instead is make Twitter absolutely FUBAR and completely useless so far as any meaningful work goes.

It's the proverbial "throwing the baby out with the bathwater".  Speaking of babies, why do I now think that had he been in Solomon's place, Musk would have gone ahead and cut the little infant in two?

"Mr. Musk, after very serious consideration, sir, I've come to the conclusion that your microblogging service sucks."

Well, there's only one thing that I can think about doing, in light of these circumstances.  That being: I'm going to stop using Twitter at all, for the foreseeable future.  If Elon Musk reverses course and rolls back all of these limits, I will gladly come back to Twitter and forgive its owner and anyone else responsible for doing this to us.  But I need my embedded Twitter feed back to normal.

Nobody of sound mind does this to his or her customers.  It's like the phone company limiting your calls to two hundred seconds per day.  That's how insane these new policies at Twitter are.

Maybe Musk will get the point if enough people complain.  Because right now it looks like he's sabotaging his own company.  If there's a financial angle to that, I've no idea what it could be.  But he needs to fix this, immediately.

 

 

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Preview: The Knight Shift's very last blog post

Am looking at making a few edits and additions to this blog.  Nothing too drastic though.  I used to change up The Knight Shift's appearance about once a year or so.  But it's had this template for five years now and it really does seem to be the best it's looked.

And I'm going to make sure it stays looking good, up until the very end.

A long time ago I heard about something that, it was kind of a legend.  That somewhere in the bowels of the CNN headquarters in Atlanta, there was a videotape.  And it was explicitly noted that it would not be used until the end of the world had been confirmed.  CNN founder Ted Turner had declared when the channel first started up that it would be on the air until the absolutely final moments of Planet Earth.  There would be no signing-off of CNN until then.

It turned out that this was not a myth.  Turner did make a "hold until end of the world" video.  Here it is on YouTube.  Depicting a military band playing "Nearer My God To Thee".  To be followed by CNN going out into darkness eternal.

When the tale turned out to be real, an idea hit me.  That I should also have a final post to be made on this blog.  There are actually two posts for the occasion: one to be made when my own passing away happens (hopefully a LONG time from now), and one to also hold for publishing until the apocalypse truly is upon us.

So if you are wondering what the very final words will be on The Knight Shift, after all this time and more, here's what is "in the vault" ready to be used at the closing of human history.  Please ignore the January 2050 timestamp.  That's just a placeholder for the actual date of Armageddon.

Anyhoo, here it is:

---

---

 

I want to be well into my eighties before I leave this earth, however it happens.  I was a kid when Halley's Comet visited in 1986 and it really was a letdown unless you lived in more southerly latitudes.  Hoping I'll get to see it during its next appearance and praying it will be much better.

Well, there it is.  When you all see that post, you will know to step away from the computer or put down your smart phone and embrace your loved ones as destruction rains down upon us.

I just like being prepared, is all :-)

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Two million visits!

 

It indeed pleases me to report that in the past hour, The Knight Shift has registered its TWO MILLIONTH VISITOR since the meter first activated in September 2004!

Thank you everyone, for making my humble little blog so well visited.  And I shall try to continue to make it worth your while to come here :-)

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So... I've been busy...

Look, it's NOT like this blog has become a red-headed stepchild to me.  Naw naw naw, far from it!  Hey, this site has now transpired across fully one-third of my entire lifespan (and hoping it will keep going on for many more thirds, or halfs, or 99.44% and that's without using cryonics).  And Lord knows, there's been plenty to muse about in the past few months.

So, what's gone on that kept all two of my faithful readers on tenterhooks waiting for their friend and humble narrator to return?  In a word: "life".

See, I was involved in one very hectic task for six months.  One that I'm going to be thankful for having for a very long time to come.  And right on the heels of that came something that has already become the most fulfilling and rewarding career that I have ever had and one that I could not possibly have imagined might be out there.  So for the past few months I've been throwing myself into that full-bore.  That it gets to utilize my trademark wackiness and creative engines makes it that much more fun.

Then there was the matter of my own house.  Yes, my own house!!  For the first time in my life.  Unfortunately being "here" and all my furniture etc. being "there" in another state, the living situation has been a fairly Spartan one.  Fortunately that is now drawing to a close.  I just have lots of stuff to go through, disseminating between useful and precious items and redundant crap that is best jettisoned.

But, it was always in mind to return to the blog and sooner than later.  To chronicle more of my personal growth but also the usual commentary on pop culture, politics, pets (Tammy the Pup is crazy as ever but she's still attracting ladies better than I drive the car), a recipe every so often, the usual nonsense.  I'm especially kicking myself in the butt that a review of Avengers: Endgame wasn't possible at the time.  So far I've seen that sucker twice and haven't yet busted my bladder.

Then there's the Star Wars scene.  What can be said about The Rise of Skywalker right now?  Ehhhh… not much.  I'm praying it will be at least half as epic and satisfying as Endgame.  It's a funny thing: for every time I've watched The Last Jedi and thoroughly liked that movie, the following viewing frustrates the hell out of me.  It's a very good movie and also not a very good movie.  It's a Schroedinger's sci-fi film.  Simultaneously excellent and lousy at the same time, depending on when and even where you see it.  So I'm hoping that The Rise of Skywalker will conclude the saga in grand fashion. And then... I don't know what I'll be doing with Star Wars.  The Skywalker family tale will have been concluded at long last.  What else will there be?  Yes, I know: The Mandalorian is coming to Disney + and there are the two new film trilogies coming from Rian Johnson and also the Game of Thrones creative team.  But those are going to have to be really fresh and arresting before I invest my valuable time toward keeping up with.

(Then again, only in the past week have I finally begun watching Breaking Bad.  I'm now early into that show's second season.  THAT is arresting a television series as there's ever been produced.  Breaking Bad is art.  Could Star Wars hit that kind of tone?  Ehhhh… doubtful.  But I'll give The Mandalorian a chance.)

Anyhoo, there it is.  And next week there is a post scheduled for this blog that is going to illuminate more on what's been going on over at this side of the screen.  Maybe it will surprise and encourage others just as much as it has surprised and encouraged me.  If so, then the frustrations and griefs over the bigger part of the past decade or so will have been worth it.  I want to believe so anyway.

Okay, 'nuff of the pathetic excuses.  Time for more blogging!

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An interesting question...

"Are you going to delete the embarrassing stuff from your blog?"

It wasn't the first time that's been asked and it won't be the last.  This time it came from a longtime friend.  And the context was clear: would I remove any of the less impressive material from this site? Meaning the content that would potentially reflect harshly upon me, might humiliate me.  Perhaps even cost me a professional opportunity or a relationship or a position of leadership.

So... would I do that?

Absolutely not.

I think in the fourteen years since The Knight Shift began, I've deleted only five posts from it.  And those were made in haste, in "moments of madness" if you will.  And for the most part they were more about others than they were about myself.

Fourteen years.  Much happens to a person in that period of time.  And if it doesn't, that person is doing something wrong.  The human condition should be about change, and growth, and evolution.  It must be about becoming more and more the individual that God meant for each of us to be.  There is no avoiding that.  Not unless one intentionally avoids all contact with the world and "turtles in" and refrains from fear of that change.  And that can't be called much of a life at all.  That was the greatest moral of A Christmas Carol, what Marley came to warn Scrooge about: that however it transpires, a person will be made to go and be among fellow men.  To have among them a life of fellowship and growth, or an eternity alone and stagnant and in remorse.  And though there had been decades wasted behind him, Scrooge made up for it.  And if that's not a dynamic life, I don't know what could be.

Since January of 2004 there have been a lot of endeavors and career choices on my part.  To say nothing of the relationships that have come and gone.  Including a divorce, the circumstances of which in one way or another will haunt me for the rest of my life and though I know it was never the "real me" but a mental illness, there is still regret.  In just the past two years I have left my original hometown and set out across America with my dog Tammy in tow, looking for... I thought at first it was meant to be a new place to live.  Now I realize that it was to find a new state of being.  One that was not possible before.  To arrive at a greater state of existence than I had ever imagined could come about.

And the Chris Knight of 2018 is not the same Chris Knight of 2016, when I left Reidsville for destinations unknown even to myself.  In just the past several months I have come to manage my bipolar disorder and come to a place where that life abundant I have sought for so long can at last be. And then there has been the spiritual growth.  My life in Christ began in November of 1996.  I like to think that it has come a long way since then.  It will never be perfect.  The growth will never cease on this side of the veil.  Even so, many have told me that I've come a very long way since those tumultuous first few years... and the even more tumultuous past eight or ten years or so.

All of that and more has been reflected in this blog from the very beginning.

Why should I deny that it happened?  How can I deny that those things occurred?

This blog has been a chronicle of many things in my life. But the real meta game being played out is that it has been a chronicle of my life itself  along the way. Stupidity and foolishness and mistakes and scars included.  And if those weren't part of it, the purpose and meaning of this endeavor would be cheated.  It would be as if I was claiming to have been perfect all along, and that would be a horrendous lie to others and even worse to myself.

It's like what Locke said in an episode of Lost, when he was asked why didn't he change the series of events that brought him suffering when he had the chance to do so.  It would have saved him so much pain.  "No, I needed that pain," Locke told Sawyer.  "It got me to where I am now."  And that's it precisely.  Wherever I am now - and I prefer to think that it's a better place as a person than I was before - the pain and grief and loss along the way was a major factor toward that.  Do I wish that some things had been otherwise?  Definitely.

But in my better moments, I know that if even God Himself were to give me the opportunity, I would not change a thing.  Who knows?  Maybe it will lead someday to the life I've always desired for.  Especially to be a husband and a father.  Maybe what has gone on before is preparing me for that happiness.  Maybe my own struggles and ordeals might someday help others who need encouragement.  That would be a very high honor, no doubt about it.

So... would I ever wipe out something from this blog if it made me "look bad"?  And trust me: there have been many things here that in retrospect make me look bad.

No.  I wouldn't.  I can't.  Doing so would be me being disingenuous to myself.  It would be me being disingenuous to others.  And most of all, it would be me being disingenuous to God.  How far I have come is a testament of His grace and ability more than of my own.  The apostle Paul didn't shirk away from the person he himself once was.  Should I or anyone else do likewise?

Yes, it means potentially costing a lot of potentially wonderful opportunities.  Even in the years since going public with having bipolar disorder (in circumstances which at the time were unavoidable in my personal life) many have asked me to consider running for office again, as I did for board of education in 2006.  I don't see how that will ever happen.  There isn't much of a market for manic-depressives in the realm of elected politics.  And there again, I would have to be honest.  I would  have to be candid about myself, lumps and all.

But I've learned along the way: getting elected to public office isn't a requisite for making an impact for the better in this world.  The world is changing every day, and whoever is senator or president or king plays only a small part in that.  It comes down to the individual, to each of us, who makes the world what it is.  And in that regard, not one of us has a role that is lesser than that of any other.

This is my own role to play.  To be a voyager on a journey of self discovery.  To be a journalist as much about myself as I ever have about my surroundings.  And to write about it.  And hope that somehow it might be read and appreciated by others.

I'm not sending any of that down the proverbial "memory hole".  It is what it is.  And it will continue to be.  No matter how bad it hurts.,

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616 days later...

Oh be nice!  I'm just a blogger.  It's not like I'm George R.R. Martin or anything...

Journeys of self-discovery don't lend themselves well to blogging along the way.  That grew apparent in Dallas where was made the most recent entry of this strange chronicle now fourteen-some years along.  An abrupt a hiatus was never desired: with a graphic parodying the fad of the hour, made in our hotel room, air conditioning cranked to the max as Tammy the Pup and I waited out the 115-degrees of afternoon sultriness.

Attempting to document everything about this journey, predicated from the start on following God's lead no matter where or when or how He did so, became an exercise in futility.  It wasn't...  and it still isn't... about the minutiae.  It's something else.  A deeper quality.  It is a virtue that cannot be known without taking that first step.  It is an unnamable quality of introspection and self-questioning wrought into being by Providence through the places and people and predicaments and peculiarities that come about along the way.  Dare take a respite to record it all for something like a blog and you miss a beat, lose a rhythm, let a moment rife with potential slip through your fingers.

So I stepped away.  For how long, I didn't know or even care to know.  There was always the intention to come back to The Knight Shift: lumps and all a labor of love for the past decade and a half.  I had no idea it would be for THIS long.  But it had to be this way.  Returning any sooner out of blogging's sake would have been a taking away from the experience.  Would have been that much less that I would have allowed God to work with.

My focus as a writer, as a historian, as an observer of the world around me, has always been toward trying to see the bigger picture.  But I had never turned that same focus onto myself.  My own life had been a thing episodic.  Perhaps because...  I didn't see my life as having any significance in the larger story?  It had been a piecemeal work.  Just accepting whatever I could as it came along.  Being thankful for the portions of good that had been allotted me these last several years.  Hoping.  Waiting.  Praying.  For something better.

When you have come to the end of everything that you are, there are two choices left to you.  Wait to die.  Or break free.  The way of one is of comfort.  The way of the other is uncertain.  One is safe.  The other, perilous.  One is a slow and lingering death, of the spirit if not of body.  The other holds no promise of happy life, yet embodies the essence of life itself.

One is to trust in nothing at all.  The other is to take a leap of faith... and thrill to see what happens next.

After everything that has happened in my life over the past several years, and despite what some family wanted, I made a break for it.  Escaped.  Took off and didn't care where to.  Didn't even know what the end result would look like except that I desired purpose, happiness, something of my own that could not be found where I was.

That most will never dare such a journey is an enormous tragedy.  But I don't know if I chose this or if it was chosen for me.  More than once I have learned during two decades of being a Christ-follower: when God wants you somewhere, He will do anything and everything to maneuver and manipulate you into a situation where you have no other option but to move a certain way, go a certain direction.  It may not be the easiest path in life.  But it certainly is life and life abundant that is promised us.

On the morning of June 12th, 2016, Chris Knight and his dog Tammy set out in a Toyota Camry.  It was packed with bare essentials for what was intended to be a search for a new home.  Clothes, a dog food and water dish, pocketknife, iPad Pro, Boy Scout compass, and a cast-iron skillet.  Because you never leave on a epic journey without a cast-iron skillet.

Nine and a half months later he returned briefly.  But he wasn’t the same.  And nearly a year since then he is even more changed, now some distance further still somewhere in America.

In that regard… I suppose if this is what God wanted of me, it has worked.  And maybe I don't have that full measure of happiness I've desired yet.  But at long last for the first time in my life I have freedom.  And at this current place that my dog and I have been brought to I have been trusted with a degree of creative power, of rare appreciation, and even a bit of leadership.  I have been given responsibilities that I'd never imagined could be there to fulfill.  And it feels awesome!

I should not be alive to write these words.  And had I heeded the selfishness of others I would have been hostage in the cruelest prison for all my days.

But to quote Steve McQueen's final words in the last scene of Papillon: "Hey you bastards!  I'm still here."

Take a leap of faith.  Make that first step onto the path, as Bilbo Baggins.  Let something greater than yourself guide your way.  You might just be surprised at how far you will go.  Be it out into the world or deep into your own heart.

So what has happened these past twenty-two months?

Adventure.  Misadventure.  Joy.  Sadness.  Thrill.  Heartbreak.  Moments of clarity.  Moments of confusion.  Appreciation of friendship.  Bitterness of betrayal.  Gratefulness to God.  Doubting God at all.  Hurting.  Healing.  Coming to terms with much of my past.  Allowing myself feel long-roiling hate... so that it could finally be allowed to die.  Seeing the world with new eyes, and putting an end to old illusions.  Letting go.  And learning to live again for the first time.

I suppose some synopsis of the past year and a half is called for.  Fair enough.  In no particular order:

• Looked upon the Pacific Ocean for the very first time on Thanksgiving Day 2016...

• Finally visited Dealey Plaza in Dallas.
• Made a brief ride through Branson, Missouri.
• Found out that I had been mispronouncing "Taos" for the past few decades.
• Got my kicks on Route 66 (and yes I made sure to have the theme from the television series playing on the car stereo) through a few towns.
• Watched little girls play hopscotch on the sidewalk of a small American town, something I didn’t think happened anymore.
• Was offered a job on a new television series (long story, VERY long...)
• Spent an afternoon with Matt, a friend from college, who also gave me a tour of Fort Leonard Wood.
• Discovered the hard way that pecan pie does not seem to exist west of Phoenix.
• Was offered an Android Smartphone and a lewd act in exchange for thirty dollars by a prostitute in Albuquerque (then the light turned green and my foot hit the pedal...)
• Got arrested at a United States Navy facility because my iPhone gave bad directions to a Subway sandwich shop.
• Witnessed my miniature dachshund pee and poop precisely on the Continental Divide.
• Got to discover what makes Kansas City barbecue such a worthy competitor to North Carolina barbecue.
• Fulfilled a lifelong dream of visiting the Palomar Observatory and seeing the Hale Telescope...

• Had a chance encounter with Danny Trejo, who said that Tammy was a beautiful dog.
• Crossed the Rio Grande several times.
• Did a Facebook Live video from inside a marijuana store in Colorado (no I did NOT buy anything!) then had to drive almost four hours back to the hotel with my clothes reeking of the smell of weed.  NOT fun at all!
• Visited the Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan presidential libraries and paid my respects at the final resting places of each.
• Saw the Grand Canyon for the first time and stood transfixed by the majesty of it...

• Was asked on numerous occasions in California where was I from, because it’s customary for me to always open doors for ladies and “guys just don’t do that here in California”.
• Was standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona...

• Drove down the Vegas Strip with the window rolled down and Tammy standing in my lap as Elvis sang “Viva Las Vegas” from my car stereo.
• Got to meet MANY longtime friends for the first time in real life.
• Spent a day at the Very Large Array radio telescope complex.
• Bought “real” Blue Sky crystal meth at the candy store that made it for the television series Breaking Bad.  Also found Saul Goodman’s law office (now a bar and grill), Tuco’s headquarters, and Walter White’s house (no I did NOT throw a pizza onto its roof)...

• Made an entire IHOP in Oklahoma City crack up laughing with an impromptu impersonation of Charles Kuralt.
• Stood outside the gates of Graceland with Tammy (who is a hound dog... get it?).
• Had to explain to the sales associate of a Build-A-Bear on the West Coast that you simply DO NOT send a teddy bear in a Duke basketball uniform to the home of a UNC-Chapel Hill alumnus, even if it IS a Christmas present for his eight-month old daughter.
• Fulfilled another longtime dream: drove along a desolate highway through the desert, not another vehicle in sight, with the car window down and listening to "Mrs. Robinson".
• Did something I had wanted to do since I was six years old: visit Meteor Crater near Flagstaff, Arizona.
• Drove atop Hoover Dam.
• Met a lot of fascinating people and made new friends along the way including but not limited to: Marissa (who once appeared in a Super Bowl commercial), Tom T. Hall (who as my father did, enjoys Sir Walter Raleigh smoking tobacco), Candice, the Japanese Man, Mr. Peppy, Ophelia the Maid, Steve the Geek (who also has a dachshund), and Benjamin the pastor of “Church Sid’s Canoe” which is a fine bunch of good folks.
• Somehow ended up in Sedona, which is kinda like Pigeon Forge if it was run by Shirley MacLaine.
• Spent a few hours visiting the U.S.S. Midway aircraft carrier.
• Got to eat gelato for the first time in my life.
• Made an excursion into Utah but did not see any polygamist enclaves.
• Visited the memorial on the site of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
• Saw Rogue One: A Star Wars Story three times.  And Doctor Strange twice, the second time with my dear friend Bethany (so thankful we finally got to meet in person!)...

• Was told that I was "the best writer who has come through the door in a very long time" and that unfortunately there wasn't a budget for another reporter.  I'm still counting that as a pretty good experience.
• Got to meet a fellow expatriate of Rockingham County working in a restaurant in Emporia, Kansas.
• Visited Mount Wilson Observatory, where Pluto was discovered.
• Found out firsthand that one MUST have a full tank of gas when crossing the Mojave Desert (unless you WANT to pay five bucks a gallon, at a run-down store filled with knockoff knick-knacks and Jehovah's Witness literature). 
• Briefly met Dr. David Jeremiah, pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church.  The visitors parking lot of which is bigger than many Walmart parking lots.
• Sought out and found EVERY Krispy Kreme between Memphis and Los Angeles.
• Walked around a Native American pueblo that has been continuously inhabited for a thousand years.
• Stood on the plains of Kansas on the night of the Fourth of July and watched fireworks being lit by towns from horizon to horizon all around me.
• Had a very surreal evening witnessing the returns of Election Day 2016 from a hotel room in Phoenix.
• Played chess with a blind man... and lost!
• Was recognized because of my 2006 school board campaign ad by a former Eden resident… in a Target store in Southern California.
• Realized that I was the only white person among at least a hundred Navajo in a supermarket.  That was pretty cool!
• Visited the home and tomb of Will Rogers.
• May or may not have fallen in love a few times... and yet the quest goes on.

There is more, lots more.  But that's the gist of what transpired during almost two years and 18 states and more than 20,000 miles of a boy and his dog across America.

So, what’s going on lately?  What happens now?

Currently I am in another place, somewhere in America.  Working with an amazing group of people on some projects while also pursuing my own.  Starting to blog again was on the "to-do" list so if you're reading these words you already know that's a success.  There is also an idea for a full-length film, my first in a WAY long time, that I've started writing the screenplay of.  Not a comedy or parody this time: it's an honest-to-gosh drama, or something.  And the way I plan to shoot it is going to be challenging and fun.

I'm not where I want to be.  Still not there.  But by the grace of God and the encouragement of many friends, both new and old, I am getting there.  There is movement.  And that alone is a grace to be thankful for.

Can't promise anything about the tone and style of The Knight Shift from here on out.  I came back but as Gandalf told Bilbo, "you won't be the same again."  And that's definitely me.  "I ain't changed but I know I ain't the same" as that song by The Wallflowers goes.  But I'm gonna be inclined to say that y'all will recognize some familiar milieus just as you will find some new perspectives.

So... let's see what's out there THIS time!

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Coming tomorrow...

The post that could finally break The Knight Shift.

Maybe the post that finally sends me to prison.  Or at least will have people wanting me to get incarcerated.

This blog's most outrageous post to date.

There will be some more posts coming tomorrow (I spent most of the weekend away from the Internet completely, so I could clear my head and cut through the fog keeping me from writing for the book.  It worked, incidentally: this afternoon I finished the first new chapter since late February.)

So those posts will get done.  And then, probably late tomorrow afternoon or early evening, will come nothing less than the boldest post in this blog's history.

But I also like to think that on some level, it will be pretty funny.

What is it?  Stay tuned!

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New sponsor: HyperMind, for all your gaming needs!

The Knight Shift is proud to welcome a new advertiser, and if you've been a longtime reader you'll already know something about HyperMind.

A positivalutely abundawonderful game store in Burlington, North Carolina, owners Nick and Denise Shepherd have established a place that draws loyal customers from as far away as Virginia, Raleigh/Durham and Winston-Salem.  And by "games" we're talking about the old-fashioned stuff that doesn't require batteries or a specialized console... but does require you to play with others and have fun.

Whether you're looking for time-honored pastimes like Monopoly and Risk, or new classics such as The Settlers of Catan, HyperMind has something for everyone.  They also stock a healthy amount of miniatures-based games (including my current drug of choice, X-Wing Miniatures).  One of the biggest sellers is perennial favorite Magic: The Gathering.  And HyperMind goes all-out to provide for its devoted players, with an ample stockpile of cards (just about every kind of current booster pack you can think of) and a huge room serving as a place of casual play and weekly tournaments.  Role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons are also a favorite.  If they don't have it on shelves, the folks at HyperMind will gladly order it for you.

Serving the Triad area since 2006, HyperMind is an experience that you will want to return to again and again.  Stop by today, and discover the fun!

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Two new advertisers with The Knight Shift

If you have a product or service and you would like to reach an average audience of 20,000 viewers a month*, please consider this blog as a venue for your advertising.  I am very thankful that the The Knight Shift's readership represents so vast a variety of interests and backgrounds.  And you can reach out to them!  Write to me at theknightshift@gmail.com with "Advertise on The Knight Shift" in the subject line, and let's get started.  I'm looking forward to working with you to build your brand and give you solid results.

And now, I am proud to announce that this blog has two new sponsors!  The first is Sweet Wick Candle Company.  Makers of fine hand-crafted candles infused with the best of fragrances, the good people at Sweet Wick are dedicated to the art of creating their products to be as much a beauty to look at as they are an aroma to indulge in.  Since its founding not too long ago, Sweet Wick Candle Company has enjoyed tremendous success and is already beginning to see nationwide distribution.  Don't wait for their amazing products to show up at your local shop, visit the website and check out their offerings today!

And next up, we have Yard Draggin...

Inventor Stephen Shumate has pulled off something that has not been done in at least one thousand years: he has re-envisioned the wheelbarrow.  Except that Yard Draggin has no wheels.  Instead, advanced materials are used in the construction of... well, to be honest I don't know how to describe it in words.  If you go to the website you'll find some videos of Yard Draggin in action.  It's just now hitting the market and I wouldn't be surprised if there are soon going to be television commercials for this product: something so useful and versatile, that you'll wonder how did you get by so long without it.

Be sure to keep watching The Knight Shift, as this blog continues to bring new products and services into the public eye.


* based on Google statistics for March 2015

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Something funny I've discovered about this blog...

During the past few days I've come to learn a lot about my own blog.  F'rinstance, according to Google's statistics this site is getting many, many more visits than have been accounted for by the site's meter.  How many more?  Well, let's just say the actual hit count is now well over two million, if I've figured it right.

Wow.

There's a "tags" tab in the sidebar, containing the names of labels for posts given them.  But I've gone so crazy with labeling that there are too many to reasonably include in the sidebar!  So I spent the better part of an hour last night going through them all, picking out which ones to have show up.  The most important criteria was how many posts each label had.

It was... enlightening.  Some labels genuinely surprised me at how many times I had used them.  I won't say which but there was one in particular that I had to include, when otherwise I probably would not at this point in the blog's evolution.  But those posts are still there, and I'm not going back to delete them, so have fun figuring out which label I'm referring to.

And then there is the popular posts tab that is the default when you go to the blog.  For years now I've been telling everyone that there are three items that consistently draw the most traffic to this blog: ghost photographs, visiting a Seventh-Day Adventist church, and Popcorn Sutton (about his life but mostly about where to buy his moonshine).  Go figure.

Some didn't believe me when I said that.  But there's the proof!  Ghosts, visiting a church, and moonshine are the top three draws to The Knight Shift.  That ain't looking to change anytime soon.  Good lucky finding that moonshine!

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AAAAAANNNDDD... We're back!!

So... the blog has a new look.

Not all thanks to me, no doubt.  I had help.  Thanks/blame Brian Fesperman, "Weird" Ed Woody, Stephen Shumate and maybe a few others for encouraging me to keep my sanity during this process, especially just today as some serious kinks were worked out of the new template.

Please note that the redesign doesn't have the post's full text on the front page.  You have to click the "Read More" button on the right of each entry.  If I had known it would look this pretty, I would have done it like that a long time ago.

There's a responsive menu at the top of the page.  Play around with it, see what you find!

The sidebar is tabbed.  Which if you remember the previous sidebar, this one is also much easier to navigate around.

And certainly most obvious is the photo slideshow.  I'm going to do what I can to keep that updated in a timely fashion.  Looks beautiful, aye?

A little fine-tuning still to go, but otherwise The Knight Shift is officially re-skinned.  Hope you all enjoy it :-)

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Pardon our dust

Methinks it's time to change things up a bit around here.

Don't be surprised if this blog experiences some trauma during the next few days or so.  I've a hankering to get creative with templates and Photoshop.  Hope to have a new look ready to go soon :-)

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It's The Knight Shift's 10th Anniversary!! AND it's Post #5,000!!

In the beginning...

Friday, January 02, 2004

Here we go, fast and furious...

I made an attempt to start a blog in March of last year. And it woulda been a fun thing to have done last year, had real-life situations not taken precedence. In a nutshell, 2003 was one major fiasco after another. But God brought us through, none the worse for wear and maybe a little more wiser for all of it. 2004 is starting out with things looking far more on the upside for my lovely lil' spousal overunit and myself.

Anyhoo, my name is Christopher Knight and this is my blog. I'm 29 years old, presently living in north-central North Carolina with my bride of a little more than a year... At the moment I do payroll and computer work for a retailer here in town, although that will soon be changing as I've begun " taking some things on faith" as it were, and trying to step out into the larger world a bit more boldly than life allowed for this past year. So maybe it's a good thing that I'm starting this blog now: 2003 was a lot of rotten things all come together. Perhaps I tried taking control of things more on my own. In 2004, I'm going to give it all over to God, and let Him make of it as He will. I've no doubt that if I can do that, that this is going to be a great new year.

So this blog will (hopefully) chronicle that in a timely fashion, along with other things. It'll also be a sounding board for some of my musings. Politically I could be considered a strong conservative, although I detest what the Republican party is fast becoming and loathe what the Democrat one long ago became. I'm a huge fan of Star Wars and the works of J.R.R. Tolkien (and may write at length on Return Of The King after seeing it for the third time hopefully this weekend), enjoy a number of computer games both online and off, and generally will try anything for fun so long as it's not immoral, illegal or causing cancer.

 That was 3,653 days ago.  Ten years later and... I think The Knight Shift has remained pretty faithful to that mission.  It's been a place to share my thoughts and experiences.  To write about the world around me from my own perspective.  To talk about things that I find interesting and share those with others.

But... wow, has it been a wild ride or what?

This blog has gone from writing about politics, to documenting my own stab at running for office.  It has reviewed everything from movies and video games to restaurants and museums.  It's chronicled my attempts at filmmaking (something I'm feeling compelled to pick up again soon) and it saw one of my videos go viral worldwide.  This blog has wound up taking on corrupt politicians, evil cult leaders and a multi-billion dollar corporation or two (or three).  It has been a place for malcontents and moonshiners (and sometimes both at once).  It has even made national headlines a time or two.  I have written on this blog everywhere from film festivals to the Columbia River in Oregon to another country.  As the Man in Black said, "I've been ev-ah-ree-where, man!"

The Knight Shift has been a place where I have written about my successes, as well as my failures.  I realized a long time ago that "unto thy self be true", as the Bard put it.  On this blog I've written about disappointments and let-downs and more than a few abject failures.  Sometimes I wonder if I held back too much (the heartbreak of divorce being chief among them).  But I also like to believe that the good has far outweighed the bad.  And here, ten years later, this blog has taken on another role: sharing my experiences about having a mental illness.  The illness itself is pretty lousy... but I'm determined to make this a triumph instead.  This morning during my daily devotional time it hit me: if I did not have bipolar and have everything associated with it happen to me, God wouldn't have had the space to work in my life and accomplish some seriously amazing things!  Without bipolar, there would not have been that testimony I could have of what God has done and is still doing.  Do I wish that my mind wasn't turning against me like it does at times?  Absolutely.  But if I had to choose between being "normal" and witnessing God at work in my life, I would pick God every time, no matter what happens to me.

This is also Post #5,000 on The Knight Shift!  Seriously: I had not planned on the two milestones coinciding with each other.  It just happened all its own.  I knew the five thousandth post was coming up all the way back in September and I had... well, different plans for it.  Those did not come to pass, but maybe that's providential as well.  I mean, ten years of blogging and 5,000 posts are each a hefty achievement.  To have them together is almost a cosmic wink.

When I read that first post again, I can't help but feel like I'm back at square one.  2003 was a very difficult year toward its end, and the final months of 2013 had me in the deepest depression that I've ever had to endure.  Far more now than I did then, I have at last been able to be content with whatever my situation may be, because I do know that God is going to bring me through it.  He has brought me through so much already (and I've chronicled a lot of it on this site) and I've no reason to believe He won't do it.  Again and again and again.

Wow.  Don't really know what else to say.  The more I think about it, the more stunned I am that this blog really did get this far.  That it's still going and Lord willing, will keep being a place that I can share stuff with this site's readers for many more years to come.  And speaking of that...

There are two people I owe the longevity of The Knight Shift and whatever success it might have had.  The first is God.  The second... is this site's readership.  And there are a lot of you.  A lot of regular readers.  From all over the world!  On any given day this blog gets visitors from all over the United States (including several in the United States Congress, gotta wonder why) and a whole bunch of other countries (a long-coming "greetings" to my friends in Moscow!).

I would have probably given up a long time ago were it not for this blog's devoted readership.  And to be honest, I don't know where I would be personally without the encouragements and prayers that many of y'all have given me in all this time.

From the bottom of my heart, and more than I could possibly convey with words, to each of The Knight Shift's readers, I say this:

Thank you.

So... where do we go from here?

A few things are on my plate at the moment, and I'll get to them as work permits (yes, contrary to what some have claimed I do have an active career, as a freelance writer.  And I may be diversifying very soon, parse that as you will).  More films are definitely coming.  I don't know if I'll run for office ever again but if that happens, I'm certainly going to document that journey as well.  In fact, were I to run I've some ideas for campaign commercials that will make that Star Wars-inspired school board ad downright tame in comparison!

We'll see how it goes.  "Always in motion, is the future," Yoda observed.

Anyhoo, for ten years and five thousand posts, The Knight Shift and its eclectic proprietor thanks you and yours and... I'm looking forward to seeing where the next ten years and another five thousand posts will bring us! :-)

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Reconsidered

Like Michael Corleone said: "Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in."

Last week I posted that it might be goodbye for good for my blogging.  Lots of things went into that.  I have wound up extremely busy with work-related stuff lately (speaking of which, I'm soon going to be advertising freelance writing services on this blog, and if you want to go ahead and solicit my services e-mail me at theknightshift@gmail.com and I'll be happy to discuss it with you!).

And then, from my perspective, some... very lousy things happened on this end.  My spirit wound up darn nearly broken.  Friends counseled me to not be discouraged, to keep going.  That this blog has given them hope when they needed it, even if at times I myself feel little or no hope at all.

Huh.  Imagine that.  Getting hope from the hopeless.  I suppose anything is possible...

Maybe just as writing about the bipolar disorder has been, I should keep writing to... stay grounded, stay focused, on things.  Keep grounded in reality.  Be able to see beyond my own problems.  Maybe even offer something worth visiting this blog for people who are needing something to smile or laugh at.  Who knows: maybe even provide something new to think about.

So for the time being, I'm going to stick with it.  I'm going to try even to have a new photo of Tammy up tomorrow.  The frequency of posting may not be very often, at least not for the time being.  But it will be something, anyway.

Just one thing that I'd like to ask: this is a very difficult time for me right now.  However it is that you can or are led to, some prayer for Yours Truly would be seriously, seriously appreciated.  I don't know how I've been brought through the past week, except for God bringing me to where I am now.  I have to thank Him and I have to thank those who have kept me in their prayers.

I suppose, if there is any hope at all in this world, that is where it is going to begin...

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Clawing my way back from bipolar depression

In light of the e-mails that came asking if things were okay on this end, I'm feeling led to address why I've been absent for the better part of the past two weeks.

There's really no other way to put it: I got hit with a bipolar depressive episode.  The worst that I have had to go through in a very long time.  And it absolutely robbed me of my desire to write or to post anything at all.  Apart from a few Twitters or Tweets or whatever they're called, my activity online was a fair reflection of my activity in real life: pretty much nil.

I've written about bipolar depression before, but this latest bout refreshed in my mind how horrible this condition is and how I would never, ever wish it upon any person.  One moment, you're feeling high on life.  And the next, totally without warning, your interest in everything flatlines.

I could not be interested in this blog.  I could not be interested in the news.  I could not be interested in Star Wars.  I could not be interested in the music of "Weird Al" Yankovic... and as Homer Simpson once observed, "He who is tired of Weird Al is tired of life."

I was not living, but only existing.  Bipolar depression is like a torturously-long drawn-out death: you want to live, but you don't know how to live.  You don't know how to want to know how to live.

There were entire days during the past two weeks when I wanted to die and get it over with.  To welcome Heaven or oblivion, because either would be better than the hell I was going through.  Once upon a time I might have considered taking steps toward ending my life and putting a stop to the pain.

In fact, one person I know, did just that in recent days.  A very good, sweet and devout Christian person.  I don't know if she had bipolar but she was suffering from an agony that nobody can possibly understand without experiencing it personally.

Sometimes I wonder if someday, that might be me too.  If the pain will become too much to bear and my cries to God seem so unheard and neglected that I feel no other alternative than to "opt out".  Because I didn't consider doing that these past weeks, but there certainly were times when I asked Him to just let there be an end to it all.

I know it's not "me".  I know it's the bipolar.  I know it doesn't last forever.  It didn't this time and it won't next time either.  And my prayer is that everyone who goes through any kind of mental illness might realize that and hold onto it during their times in the valley.

Were it not for the honor of being in a best friend's wedding last weekend, my girlfriend's presence and encouragements, and a few other things, I wouldn't have been able to get out of this house at all.  Okay, Tammy the Pup still needed walking a few times a day, so there was that.

Thankfully the episode is retreating.  My interest in life is returning.  Kristen tells me often that I won't have this problem so severely after we're married (parse that as one will, heh-heh...) and Lord willing that will be sooner than later.  My desire to write is coming back and I'm going to try to make up for some stuff in the next few days (not the least of which will be a review of Man of Steel: a film which I am increasingly of the mind is the best superhero movie made to date).

Okay, back to work I go...

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The Knight Shift has an official Facebook page!

At long last, this blog has a bona-fide presence on Facebook!  It's been up for awhile now but I wanted to make some posts on it to sorta "furnish the place" before going public with it

Anyhoo, the URL thingy is facebook.com/theknightshiftblog (pretty clever, huh?).  The Facebook site's primary function will be to share posts that I make here on the blog.  But I also have plans to use it for other neat stuff: anything from previews for coming attractions to emergency posts from the field when full-blown blogging isn't an option, to... dunno, maybe a recipe or two.  I aim to have the place as hopping with seemingly random iotas of information, thoughts and wild ideas as this blog is.

Okay well... "like" me, why don'cha? :-)

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BEING BIPOLAR, Part 7: Taste The Rainbow

This is the latest in a series of articles that The Knight Shift and its strange proprietor is glad to present about what it is to have bipolar disorder.  As always, I am attempting to chronicle and document my journey through a life with mental illness thoroughly, with honesty, and at times with a healthy dose of humor!  If you are new to this blog (hey, stick around!  I  try to keep things interesting around here :-) then you may wish to read the previous entries of Being Bipolar.  Whether you have kept up with the series or are just now discovering it, this new installment takes us into the wild and unpredictable realm of medications and mental illness.




Let's talk about... drugs!

I've had five possible installments for the next Being Bipolar sitting on my desktop for the better part of a year because I hadn't been able to figure out where to go next.  But finally I decided to go with the one about the chemical carnival that is finagling with pharmaceuticals.  Why?

Bipolar disorder brings a lot of pain, confusion and frustration into one's life.  And treating it with medication plops an entirely new layer of frustration on top of that.  There are a very few fellow strugglers with bipolar who've had the grace to never have to "juggle drugs" to reach a place where their condition can be better managed.  I however am not one of those people.  Sometimes I find myself thinking that I could have had a much better life all along already even with bipolar disorder, were it not for what I've gone through doing what I can to get the meds figured out.

So that's why I'm writing about medications for mental illness.  To share my tale of woe and occasional wackiness that has come from using them.  Not just as a kindred spirit for others with bipolar but also for those who must live with a bipolar person.  Because they are just as affected by this condition as those at ground zero and too many times there is intense suffering that must be endured because of the rigmarole a bipolar person goes through to "get it right".

That’s certainly been the case for me and the people in my life...

"Climb in the back with your head in the clouds, and you're GONE!!!!!"

I have literally lost count of the number of variety of meds that I have been on since early 2004.  Okay, for longer than that.  My first hospitalization was in the spring of 2000, because of extremely severe depression following the death of my grandmother.  I was put on Paxil and remained on that for more than two years until I realized that it wasn't doing me any good. That's not to say that the drug itself is ineffective, but that it wasn’t effective for me.

It was one particular incident which led my wife at the time to compel me to see a medical professional about my... "problem", which by this point was clearly something well beyond mere clinical depression.  At the time I had not yet been diagnosed as having Bipolar Disorder I (the more severe kind).  I think my doctor, after she heard about all the stuff I had been going through (death of family members, loss of a job, discovering I had inadvertently been working for a swindling operation... I wish to God I could tell you I'm making this up) wanted to "play it safe" and I can't fault her for that.  I mean, it could have been bipolar.  It could have also been a lot of other things, too. 

The doctor put me on two drugs: Wellbutrin and Risperdal. I will never forget the return to my apartment later that morning. The doctor had written prescriptions but she also provided samples to help get me started. I got home, took each as prescribed and laid back on the bed and thought to myself: "This is the first day of the rest of my life and it really is going to turn into something beautiful.  Thank you Lord for the knowledge and the wisdom that went into making drugs for people like me!"

'Course, in the end it didn’t turn out that way.

Wellbutrin is an antidepressant. Risperdal was prescribed to treat anxiety. And that combination worked pretty well... for a few months anyway.  And then as summer approached I sensed an increase in manic thoughts and behavior.  At the time I thought that perhaps it was just my system developing a tolerance for one or both of the drugs.  Much later I discovered that Wellbutrin, in some cases, can heighten the probability of having a manic episode for those with bipolar. And that's what was happening to me.

There were two other things that I was experiencing as well: an inability to have a solid night's rest, and being unable to focus my thoughts for very long.

It was the summer of 2004 that I was working on Forcery: that parody of Stephen King's Misery, about George Lucas being held hostage by a crazy Star Wars fan.  I now wonder how much better that first movie could have been if I "had my act together".  During those months of filming whenever we could all get together I felt driven by a need to get it finished and out the door and... I put Chad and Melody and Ed through hell at times.  The very first time we shot at my parents' house (which was the main bedroom set) I tried to film it all in one day.  I don't know what’s the more miraculous: that I didn't burn the house down (seriously) or that Chad, Melody and Ed didn’t walk off the project then and there.  Was I that manic?  Hell yes!

(I’m declaring here and now: Melody Hallman Daniel is an INCREDIBLY beautiful, sweet and strong woman and immensely talented actress.  She not only drove as far as she did each time to film Forcery but far more than that, she put up with me for the whole crazy time.  I’m always going to be thankful to have her as a friend, along with everyone else who I have been blessed to have met during my filmmaking projects.)

It was around this time that the diagnosis for Bipolar Disorder I was handed to me.  My doctor suggested that I go off the Wellbutrin and give something else a try.  That turned out to be small doses of Lorazepam: in larger amounts a strong sedative but it has also been used as a mild sleeping aid and relaxant.  Instead of daily doses I was only to take it "as needed".

Lorazepam isn't meant to be used long-term, because a person does tend to develop a tolerance to it pretty quickly.  It helped to get me back on a normal sleeping schedule.  However my thoughts running too fast remained a problem.  So I went off the Lorazepam and was put on Adderall.

Rampancy   Of all the experiences that I’ve had with meds, nothing... and I mean nothing... comes close to what began in the fall of 2004 and my time with Adderall.

The medications I had been taking were having a very blunting affect on me creatively.  We were wrapping up filming Forcery and then right as we had got all our footage together… my mind went every which way but loose.  I wanted to edit the film but couldn't get myself together for the task.  And I was feeling excruciatingly desperate for something that would get that creative side of me flowing again.

Well, Adderall worked.  Oh bruddah did it work.  My thoughts and feelings became tightened and focused again, and along with that came a return of my passion and creativity.  A huge chunk of Forcery got spliced together.  The holiday season was going well and I was already thinking about what I could do as a film project next.

I had Christmas Day in North Carolina that evening my then-wife and I drove to her parents' place in Georgia.  And for some reason or another while cruising south down I-85 in the darkness of Christmas Night, my mind wandered onto the subject of God.

That was the real beginning of one of the craziest periods of my life.  Something which I hope and pray will never happen to me again.  It was when my mind became so fast and so powerful and seemingly so capable of anything that I felt as if I had become omnipotent.

It started innocuously enough.  I mean, for most of my life I’ve pondered theology.  Wondering if there is a God and after accepting His existence, contemplating how and why it is that He chooses to work in the ways that He does.  Things like that aren’t new to me.  Except that during that drive I found my thoughts focusing with startling circumspection on God and His place in the universe.

I'm going to do my best to describe what was happening to me: what began as a passing musing about God and His relationship to the world around us, began to grow at a geometric rate into an unceasing process of analysis, theoretical supposition and uncontrollable thinking about not just God, but about mass and energy and the speed of light and space and time and angels and the concept of free will and sin and what sin really is and how it correlates with the entropy of the universe...

It could not be stopped. Not by my own choice. When it finally did stop, my mind had conceived of a personal theology about God which fit perfectly within what I had known and have come to know about the physical universe and its laws.  There is nowhere else that I can really take that subject matter: it's been played out in my mind and I don't see how it can go further.  My mind knew that too...

...so it decided to focus on other things instead.  Which turned out to be anything at all.  Practically overnight I found myself capable of understanding some higher mathematics, which should have been impossible for a guy who hasn’t been able to do much past comprehending square roots.  A passing fancy about genealogy turned into a weeks-long study of my family history going back to the time of the New Testament.  For the first time in my life I could conjugate verbs in Spanish (bear in mind that I flunked Spanish in high school... twice).

Artist's rendering of Chris Knight when he was taking Adderall(tm)

Then there was what really did nearly drive me over the brink of insanity.  My mind began trying to comprehend the scale of the cosmos, from the Planck length (considered the shortest possible distance between two points) exploding outward to the megastructures we see in the patterns of distant galaxies.  That particular phase went on for months, well into the summer of 2005, long after I had gone off the Adderall.  I would sometimes lay awake at night, only able to think about that vast, vast darkness punctuated by mere iotas of matter and light.  Wondering what my place in all of that was.  Wondering, even, if I should want to be dead and not having to think about it all anymore.

It was a video game franchise that I had just begun playing which gave me a new terminology for what I was going through.  In the mythology of the Halo series, characters like Cortana and other artificial intelligences can only function for seven years before they go "rampant": their neural structures become so developed and hyper-active that they literally "think" themselves to death.  Before that happens however comes a period of psychosis and instability.

That's what I was going through.  Rampancy.  Because of a prescribed drug interacting with my bipolar in a very unpredictable fashion.  My mind was becoming too much more powerful than one mortal being should ever be.  “Knowledge is power”, it is said.  The Bible also teaches that with much learning and wisdom, there also comes grief.  I had to learn that the hard way.  In fact, my experience with Adderall taught me that there is such a thing as too much understanding, and that there is a bliss to be known when one chooses not to fixate on the nuances of things we aren’t meant to fully comprehend.

"Rampancy" was the word that I used to my doctor.  When I explained where it came from she said she thought that was a good word for that kind of condition.  She took me off the Adderall.  It remains however the one drug which I know I have developed an addiction to... and I went through a hella withdrawal as a result.

But for a few weeks and months, I really did feel like I had become a god.

I never want to feel like that again!

"…A whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…"  

"Not that we needed all that for the trip,
but once you get locked into a serious drug collection,
the tendency is to push it as far as you can."

 Then is where I began to lose count of the kinds of meds I was placed on and off.  Let's see: I know Strattera is in there somewhere.  So was Abilify.  And Xanax.  Yeah I'm pretty sure Xanax came and went at some point.  There was trying Zoloft, and that worked for awhile before it started to have no effect whatsoever. Was I ever on Pristiq?  I can’t remember. Somehow I totally missed being on lithium. Yeah they put me on everything else but I didn’t get lithium...

I would guess that there have been between a dozen and twenty different medications that have been prescribed to me during most of the past ten years.  I can't remember all of them.  It literally strains my memory to try to recall every single one of them.

But I remember their side effects well enough.  Indeed, one of the reasons why I don't remember them all is because of the side effects. Not "loss of memory" in the clinical sense, but rather how I lost track of the variety of drugs amid the swirls and chaos of my mind veering this way and that, trying to compensate for how it wanted to go in the opposite direction instead.  I know when I went off Risperdal. It was the summer of 2007. And I thought... I thought... that I was losing my hair because of Risperdal.  I wasn't at all. But that's what I was perceiving and that I had read about Risperdal causing hair loss didn't help matters at all. "Imagination running wild"? Give "deduction in overdrive" a try sometime and come talk with me.

And then there is Seroquel. Something which I have come to call "that rotten shit". Very, very few things in my life have merited such harsh vernacular. Seroquel is one of them.

I was involuntarily placed in a behavioral health facility in September, 2008. The doctor I had been seeing all of this time decided that we should try Seroquel.  What with everything else that crashed down onto me at once, I became very glad to be taking it.  For a while, anyway...

Okay, I know and accept that Seroquel is a "big gun" in the treatment of bipolar disorder.  That it has worked wonders for many people.  In those first few months following my hospitalization it went a significant distance toward helping me manage my mind.

But I'm not like most people.  Come to think of it, I don't like the idea of anyone being like most people.  Each of us is an individual and it's not only going to be impossible to apply one "fix" for a problem on everybody, it should be impossible.

I'll run down the grocery list of what Seroquel did to me: dulled thoughts.  Lethargy.  A loss of creativity.  A loss of interest in things I had long been fascinated with.  Tremors in my hands and fingers (predominantly with my right hand, for reasons unknown).  Chronic heartburn and acid indigestion.  More of an appetite than I was used to having.  And with that came a horrid gain in weight.

How bad was that?  When I was first brought to the hospital my weight was about 170 pounds.  By the end of that year a few months later, I was up to 220 pounds.  And it kept going up until my weight crested at 270.

I will confess: there were other factors that figured into my weight gain (the most significant was depression from my wife’s departure) but none of that... none whatsoever... would have led to my being overweight without the Seroquel.

Yeah, my bipolar was becoming more manageable all right.  Unfortunately the rest of me was getting in piss-poor shape because of the very thing that was making that possible!

I decided on my own to quit Seroquel cold-turkey. Now that's something which a patient should NEVER do without consulting his or her physician.  But in my case I had come to a point where the Seroquel was more hassle than it was worth.  And by that point I was on another drug (more about that soon) which seemed to be having a more positive effect than anything I had taken previously.  And also, I had a new girl in my life: she fast became the best encouragement God had ever put into my life on this earth, and I decided to take a chance and trust in the support system He has blessed me with.  Also, I did want to get in better shape for her (y'know, being a guy and all...)

That was in November of 2011.  By the time Mom passed away the following month, I had already lost a lot of weight and before she left us Mom told me that I was looking much better.  I am now 4 pants sizes less than where I was before quitting Seroquel.  I lost 50 pounds within the space of a few months and today my weight hovers around 200 pounds.

And now I'm torn between losing more and maintaining what I have now.  Because at the risk of coming across as immodest, this is the most buff that I've looked in my entire life!  A lot of people have told me that my appearance is the best it's ever been.  And my girlfriend certainly has no complaints :-)

The Mistake We All Seem To Make

But going back to something: I cannot reiterate enough how a person considering stopping a medication should NOT do so without first consulting a doctor.  That goes for any prescription drug but in the case of a mental illness like bipolar it is especially so.  I admit and thoroughly acknowledge that I wasn't being that responsible when I quit Seroquel. That was an awfully big risk that in the end proved was worth taking.

But I'm not going to write about this and deny that I have tried doing that before and got burned bad as a result of it.  Not just me either, but several other people.

When I went off the Risperdal, I thought that I was "better". That I didn’t need it or any of the other drugs anymore.  I was feeling so much more improved that I honestly believed that whatever this bipolar was, that I had conquered it.

Big, big mistake.

Whatever happened to me pharmacologically in the months after that, I was definitely going through a sense of elation and euphoria... but in reality I was getting worse.  Downright dangerous, even.

It's something that I'm still not comfortable with writing about on this blog.  But I'm okay to share this much: I became a danger to my wife, to friends, to family, to myself.  Because I stopped taking the medication.

It wasn't the absence of the drug itself that caused all of that so much as the shock to my body trying to compensate for it.  But I didn't know that until much later and by then it was too late for too many of my life’s most cherished aspects.

I had no idea what was going on or what I was doing, and I could not have known at all to begin with.  But my mistake cost me very, very dearly.  In fact, there isn't a day that goes by that I have some lament for what happened because of my loss of judgment.

And unfortunately I'm not alone.  It seems that many if not most of those who suffer from mental illness in whatever form, have also abruptly halted their intake of meds. Sometimes it's because of perceived physical effects.  Others, because a person feels that the meds are having no effect at all, or that they have magically "cured" that person.

Let this much be clear if nothing else I've written so far is: there is no cure for mental illness.  It can only be managed and controlled, but never fully rid of.  The meds are part of that management, and you can't go by "feelings" about that. Bipolar disorder wrecks havoc with your mood and your feelings but when it comes to the drugs you’re prescribed, you absolutely can NOT trust your feelings about that!  It could result in serious injury, or worse.  Potentially even being driven to commit suicide.

I don't want that to happen to anybody.  And if you're bipolar or have some other mental illness, I don't want it to happen to you especially.  Do the right thing and call your doctor in the morning instead.  Or tonight if ya wanna (hey, you're paying him for this anyway, right?).

Stability(?) At Last!

It took from the earliest days of 2004 until the summer of 2010 before I finally, finally found something that worked and is still working.

How did I realize it was working?  It was a turn of events nearly three years ago that dropped me hard out of the fog of disease and denial and brought me to the realization that things had gone terribly, terribly wrong in my life and that I had to do what I could to make up for it all.

I’ve tried to do that.  Some things worked out.  Others, never did.  But God has a way of letting things turn out for the best even if you can't possibly imagine how. And I like to think that is what has happened to me...

Currently I'm on a daily regimen of Citalopram (also known as Celexa) and Lamectal (also called Lamotrigine).  I'm not a doctor and I don't play one on teevee (or the Internet for that matter) but Citalopram has become the one true wonder drug which I have needed and benefited the most from all this time.  There have been no deleterious side effects from it. Lamectal is for treatment of my depression and it has likewise proven extremely effective. After some trial and error I am now taking one 150 mg of it daily: one-half a tablet in the morning and the other half at night.  I've found that it’s the best way to manage the depressive episodes if they happen throughout the span of a day, and it helps me to sleep better at night.

That's two teeny tiny tablets I'm taking every day.  The total cost for them per month is less than $20.

I won't lie: I had to go through hell to find those meds.  To find anything that would let me live some semblance of a normal, productive life.  And a lot became lost along the way.

But I've a real chance now.  I have real stability for the first time in my life.  A lot of things to live for and look forward to.  I’m going to keep taking the medication.  It's a very small price to pay for being able to enjoy so much.

My life is finally my own.  And there's no turning back now.

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