I'm in the process of writing a short story about the statuettes on top of my monitor at work. I think I have understood something about my relationship with the writing process and how it has changed since I started taking bipolar medication. Before, all the creative things I did were to take my mind off of the pain, literal and metaphorical. Now, it's harder for me to find, because I have to want it, but it's more of a sense of focus. I take something small, something that strikes me, and I focus on it. Not with the terrible intent that impassioned me when I was being cyclothymic, but with a more healthy emotion - that sense of compassion and "all-is-right-with-the-universe-ness" that I've always believed is our sense of the numinous. And then - miracle of miracles! - then, I can see the story unfold, far better than I ever saw it before, and it catches me up, and I just sort of keep a record. It's like watching a dream. Times like this I think I may be a real writer after all.