Lunatic

I'm a lunatic.

I’ve always been happy to claim mental illness, as it adds a sense of mystery to my otherwise dull persona. Until I was actually diagnosed as having an anxiety disorder this was all for fun. Now that I’ve had to do a little reading on the subject of mental illness there’s too much temptation to either self-diagnose or to imagine every little quirk is another symptom of a bigger and more problematic situation.

I suppose it’s similar to an elderly person forgetting where they left their car keys and instantly being afraid that this is the first sign of Alzheimer’s.

Perhaps it’s just a desire for something on which to blame my problems. If I overeat it’s because of a “glandular condition.” If I lay about all day then I must be depressed. A cheap desire to imagine that my gluttony and sloth is not my fault; the devil made me do it.

Or the moon.

I woke at 5am on Monday morning so that I could get to work early enough to encamp at a desirable workstation. I worked 11 hours without a lunch break. I got home and ate dinner with my wife. She was tired from her long day and went to bed about 9pm. I lay next to her for about five minutes before deciding that I had chores to do and was not particularly tired. From 9pm to 1am I did the following:

Hand-rinsed all the dishes and ran the dishwasher

Washed five loads of laundry (although only four were dry by 1am)

Folded all the dry laundry

Cleared about a quarter of our garage of clutter

Mopped the kitchen floor

Moved the refrigerator, mopped underneath it, and cleaned its top.

I did all of this while listening to the first half of Garnethill, a novel by Denise Mina. Mina’s novels are fantastic and the reader of this one has the most lovely voice; so much so that I am typing this and hearing it with a female Glaswegian accent. It’s brilliant.

I fed the dogs at 7am and got up ready to face the day about 10am. Since then I'm washing more dishes, washing more clothes, cleaning up more of the garage, and thinking about cleaning up our computer room. There’s an old vanity that I'm half done refinishing so that my wife can use it to prepare her makeup rather than sitting at her computer desk using a hand mirror. Even if it were completely done there’s no place to put it until I can clear some garage space to put some of our computer room junk out of the way. It’s a project.

Does this sudden burst of manic activity make me manic-depressive or bi-polar? I highly doubt it but getting momentum at night might very well have to do with the moon. Today I'm just riding the wave that started its surge last night. How far can I go before the wave crashes? This is the question.

How much can I get done so I can coast for days after? Is it all about getting a little ahead so that I can properly loaf? That would make me diabolically manic-procrastinative, wouldn’t it?

Until they put the DSM-IV out on audio, I’ll probably never know.

Till then, I'm blaming it on the moon.