Mania, Productivity, and the Montage of Joy

There’s a strange mixture of energy running through me right now. Mania has me up at three in the morning, typing away, words pouring out faster than I can believe. Thirteen chapters in a day. It feels incredible, but it’s also terrifying. Mania is dangerous. It’s not just “being in a good mood.” It’s a diagnosable state where your brain races faster than you can keep up. Sleep vanishes, judgment slips, and what feels like brilliance can just as quickly tip into wreckage. For every peak, there’s a valley waiting.

That’s the bipolar cycle: mania promises it will last forever, depression swears you’ll never climb out, and both are convincing lies. For me, it’s easier to spot depression than mania. Mania can look like productivity and ambition. Depression doesn’t hide—it comes with suicidal ideation, and the moment those thoughts creep in, I know exactly where I am.

Even so, I’ve never been the kind of person who can just lie in bed for days. When I wake up, I get up. Sometimes that means working at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. I don’t know if that’s discipline or dysfunction—probably both—but it’s how I move forward. And out of that rhythm has come something I never expected: a trilogy of books about my life.

The Cancer Diet was survival. The Lying Years was truth. And now Montage of Joy is about recovery. At first, that joy feels fragile—real, but built on sand. I can’t stay in this state forever. Life will crash in, as it always does, and I’ll have to react. But maybe that’s the magic of these books: they’re honest to the moment.

I didn’t mean to write three memoirs, but here they are. The Cancer Diet was 268 pages. The Lying Years crossed 400. Who knows what Montage of Joy will be? Maybe shorter, maybe sharper, maybe not. I don’t know yet whether I’ll keep them separate or edit them into one volume. Either way, I’ve come too far not to finish.

Not many people have read them so far—sixteen copies of The Cancer Diet, nothing since. But I’m okay with that. I’m not writing to shout look at me. I’m writing to say this is me. If one person reads it and sees themselves more clearly, it will have been worth it. I especially hope my son reads them one day and understands me better, and maybe understands the world a little better too.

So here I am, thankful. Thankful even for the pain, the drama, the cycles that carried me here. Thankful for the small joys—the quiet of 3 a.m., the dog at my feet, the fact that words are still coming. Who knows where Montage of Joy is going to lead. I only know it’s leading me to something real.