The Knight Shift

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Last week I said that there were two new features coming to this blog: Movies I’ve Never Seen and A Sermon A Week. And the plan was to kick them off this past Sunday.

Obviously that didn’t transpire according to plan.

It was bad timing more than anything else. This past weekend I was doing the last few performances of our community theatre guild’s production of Gypsy. And then some other stuff happened and the new stuff got pushed to the backburner.

I’m now hoping to do the first Movies I’ve Never Seen sometime this coming week, and A Sermon A Week next Sunday. The stuff that’s on my plate should have cleared off by then for me to give it the attention that it deserves. I’m not worried about Movies I’ve Never Seen, except that I just have to figure out which movie that I’ve never seen ...

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“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

— Maya Angelou

Edit 02/14/2011 2:18 pm EST: A friend let me borrow a book not long ago. It’s called When God Winks At You. It’s filled with stories of many people – including a number of celebrities – who experienced extraordinary coincidences and twists of fate that made them realize something: that God is watching over us. It’s a very good book, and it written in a style that reads pretty quickly.

Ever since reading it, I have been praying that God might wink at me, too. And give me that personal assurance that “Chris, I know you are going through a very dark and difficult time. But I love you! I won’t quit on you or abandon you. You are My child and ...

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This is the fourth installment of an ongoing series exploring what it means to live with bipolar disorder. Reading the previous essays is recommended, but not absolutely required for understanding this one, which deals with depression associated with bipolar and how it differs from normal depression. But if you choose to take the time to read the other posts in this series, I for one would be grateful 🙂

It took a very long time for me to go outside after Granny died.

It was the last Saturday in March of 2000. Our Boy Scout troop was camping for the weekend in some woods east of Reidsville. The winter that year had been harsh. Worse than anything we’ve had in recent seasons. After too many weeks snowed-in we were all ready for some fresh air and wide open space.

It was green. Very green. And so warm outside. All full ...

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I was wondering over the weekend if this might happen. And unfortunately, it has now. I am writing and posting this video during a bipolar depressive episode.

I need to reiterate something: managing bipolar disorder doesn’t mean that I’m going to be totally free of its effects. There will be times when I go through episodes of severe bipolar. But I am thankful that it doesn’t have to ruin my life as it has before.

I said last week in the first Being Bipolar video supplement that I intended to document a bipolar episode if and when it happened. This is the first bipolar depressive episode that I have been able to record. I don’t think there’s anything in this clip that most people would at all consider “disturbing” but, I wanted to give a heads-up about all the same…

And Part 4 of Being Bipolar should be up later ...

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As if the Being Bipolar series wasn’t enough: I’m about to put even more on this blog on a regular basis!

(Maybe it has something to do with the recent redesign of this place, that it’s just demanding lots of new content…? 🙂

The first is something that I’ve had in mind since Christmas, and is coming out of some necessity but also I think it’ll be a lot of fun: Movies I’ve Never Seen! It’s like this: my DVR is fast filling up with stuff that I’ve recorded from TCM and some other channels. And I haven’t seen them yet. Like, not ever. Even though most of these are movies that I’ve heard of all my life! Well, I’m going to begin watching them, and posting reviews of them here. Expect that to start up sometime this week.

And then, there is something that… is going to be ...

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The idea hit a few days ago: as well as writing about having bipolar disorder as part of this blog’s Being Bipolar series, that I could also do video entries as a supplement to the written material.

So today I went out and got a webcam and… well, here’s the first one!

I intend to also record myself if/when a bipolar episode hits, and post the unedited footage of me talking about what it’s like.

Expect more videos soon!...

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…and there are lots of you, apparently 🙂

I am currently planning something of an experiment. If there are any questions – any at all, ‘cuz there is very little that I have thought would be off-limits – that you have about bipolar disorder, e-mail them to me at theknightshift@gmail.com.

What I am particularly looking for are any questions that could be directed toward a person suffering bipolar, about what having bipolar is like.

Any question that you have about bipolar, shoot it to me. Y’all will be finding out sooner than later what this is for....

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This is the third installment of an ongoing series exploring what it means to live with bipolar disorder. If you have not done so already it is highly recommended that you read Part 1: “The Tale of the Two Chris Knights” and then Part 2: “Sketching Uniquiet”. Don’t worry: this chapter will still be here waiting for you 🙂

In Part 2 of this series, “Sketching Unquiet”, I wrote about what bipolar disorder is as a medical condition, and then I attempted to roughly approximate what it’s like to live with it on a daily basis.

In the week and a half since publication I’ve re-read that installment of Being Bipolar at least a dozen times and the more that I do, the more I can’t help but feel led to ponder and expound on it further. Now don’t get me wrong: Part 2 was the best that ...

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