Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.

I noticed that when I quit Nicorette, I start to doubt my sanity.  Thus it is confirmed that I need to have a certain level of dopamine to remain sensible.

Well, sanity is very subjective.  In my case, I choose to set my own standard since I don't need to conform to the social norms.

To certain people, Jalaluddin Rumi and Shams of Tabrizi were loonies.  The same goes for Ar Razi the Persian Polymath.  And yet, their thoughts live on throughout the centuries.  Certain prophets were schizophrenics but they too endure the passage of time.

You know what?  All these are irrelevant.  As long as we subscribe to DO GOOD and DO NO HARM, we can be anybody we choose to be.  If mental health is actually affecting 1 out of 5 people, I would say that the world actually has quite a handful of crazy people.

So I'm not going to question my sanity anymore.  What I can say is I am autonomous.  I managed to carve a niche for myself in the middle of a society that seems clueless about what they want in order to be healthy and happy.  That is the basic measurement of sanity.  For example, why would a person systematically subject himself to poison when he knows it will harm his body?

I had been on that road before.  I smoked, drank, and ate junk.  At that time I didn't think I was crazy.  I even subscribed to many false beliefs including being religious; thinking that if I am religious I am guaranteed a happy afterlife.

That's why Socrates said, "Now thyself and the knowledge will set you free."

That's all it takes.  The answer is within.  If you keep questioning, eventually the answer will come to you.  It only matters to you.  They're bound to be people who follow without questioning.  The majority is like that.  For us who don't stop at the first right answer, we march on.  We are not afraid to debunk our own hypothesis in exchange for a more resounding explanation.  That is having a growth mindset.  The final frontier is not a planet in a faraway galaxy, it's the human imagination.

Throughout my life, I had been relying on my thoughts.  Not until I had Bipolar Disorder.  It lasted for a good twenty-one years.  Initially, it was a scary experience.  I cannot make a sound judgment because I was not being sensible.  Nowadays, the illness had subsided.  Thanks to modern medicine and a change in lifestyle I am now living a pretty decent life although my doctor said I have to take the medication for life.

As I look back, I had always been a divergent thinker.  The illness just accentuated it.  So for a while, I tried to fit in.  I wanted so bad to be accepted by society.  Then I realized that I don't need to be a conformist.  What I got to do is design a lifestyle that is independent of the masses.  Initially, I felt that I was missing out.  So for a good 3 years, I was depressed.  Then I turned to one of my great passions; I used my time to read as much as possible.  I became a relentless reader on whatever subjects I had an interest in.  True enough, I managed to eradicate my Fear of Missing Out (FOMO).

From there I turned to blog writing.  It was not easy.  I needed to condition my mind to focus on what matters to the readers.  It was when I discovered personal blogging that I really took off in my writing career.  Through personal blogging, I became a Wordsmith Warrior.  I rekindled my interest in using the dictionary again and slowly I created my own personal writing style.

Nowadays, I am not too concerned with the impression I leave with the articles that I write.  I simply write because I am a writer.  Some days I write good, some days I am not that resourceful.  I write a lot about things that matter to me.  Along the way, I write about my observation of society at large.  Whatever the case may be, the satisfaction of being a writer is about being able to create rather than merely being a consumer.

Looking back at my illness, I now realize that the illness is a liberation.  It gives me the courage to say what's in my mind without the fear of being judged.  People *wi[th] (will) judge you anyway.  In the first seven seconds when you meet a person, you already form a judgment.  My attitude has always been, "Those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."

* Intervention from Sarah; my coauthor and cyber spouse.  That means she agrees with me.

Since I started this blog in 2006, I had deleted quite a number of postings just because I feel that some of them are not appropriate for the general audience.  After a while, I realized that when I deleted the postings, I was actually deleting my thoughts from my own knowledge bank.  I doubt anybody ever read my blog from end to end more than once.  I however will periodically read it as if I am looking at a photo album.  These are my thoughts instilled in time.  As much as it is meant for the general audience, the blog is my reference to my past.

From this point on I just leave whatever I write here for the benefit of the few who appreciate it.

Blessed are the weird people: 

poets, misfits, writers

mystics, painters, troubadours

for they teach us to see the world through different eyes.

- Jacob Nordby