Control: A Purpose

I, Dalton Lewis, write the blog for a reason. I am a crazy person. I hear voices. They talk to me, tell me things. I spend a great deal of my time trying to prove my innocence to voices in my head. I wanted to show a little piece of that to the world, to show them — show you — something of life with a mental illness. That’s the reason for the blog.

I’ve been writing for three hours a day for about two and a half months now, and it’s going well. I work some — I play on the internet some, see how friends are doing on facebook, and I listen to too much classic rock — Pink Floyd’s The Wall or Lynyrd Skynyrd with “Free Bird” or The Cure’s seminal goth classic “Friday I’m in Love.” I listen to music while playing around and getting some writing done. The physical act of sitting, at a computer, for three hours makes me get some work done.

I drink fluids all day long as I do it. I start the day by guzzling two Coca Cola Zero Sugars — the twelve ounce bottles. I take my morning medication — antidepressants that I’ve been on for so long that I don’t know if they do anything or not. Once I have done that I procrastinate for an hour or two. I sometimes play Magic: the Gathering: Arena or Starcraft 2 on the ladder, the competitive format which lets us nerds play against each other on our computers to see who is the best at the game. (I’m in the middle, at platinum, in both games.)

Then I write for three hours — pouring my heart onto the page to show what life is like with a mental illness. Sometimes I write in the morning, eating breakfast from a fast food place or Starbuck’s — sausage egg and cheese biscuits and soda. Some other times I write at night — tonight I eat Popeye’s chicken tenders and small fries and a soda I didn’t intend to order. The food is universally delicious, and that’s part of the problem. I eat too much. I’m fat.

Then I sit around, at home. I play video games — like the Mass Effect games or the Dragon Age games or Star Wars: the Old Republic with Simon. I watch the Chicago Bears play football. I watch television, like NCIS or other similar shows. I work out some days.

I read. I read classic books like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or The Martian Chronicles. I read modern books like Devolution or The Girl with all the Gifts. I play around with wargaming miniatures and build armies of Warhammer 40k miniatures.

I live a life. It’s not the life you might want, but for me, it’s a pretty good life. I work hard at writing and at reading and at studying what works and what doesn’t in my writing. It’s a life, I think, that is worth living.

Thanks, and take care, friends.