Now, understand. I’ve never been very well disciplined about keeping my nose to the grind stone. And, perhaps even more to the point, “The best-laid plans of plans of mice and men often go awry.” (The Scot bard Rabbie Burns’ original of that hackneyed phrase is infinitely more lilting. But nearly as incomprehensible to us moderns: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.”)

Me included: “Gang aft a-gley”. Whaaaat?

But, that’s besides the point. The real point is that this blog I’ve been chipping away at for yea-so-many-years actually does have a bigger goal in mind. And here’s the general idea of what I’m thinking going forward. Assuming, of course, I can keep my nose to the grind stone. And that my best-laid schemes don’t gang a-gley.

Drum roll-wait for it-the publication of a memoir!

Titled? You guessed it: Surviving The Crazy Twins

And if anyone out there is asking themselves, “I wonder where that came from?”, we know exactly who to blame: me. ‘Cause if you haven’t caught the general drift of my life by now, my communication skills are so lost in the throes of a bipolar break that you should probably call the guys in the little white coats, tell them to put me in a straitjacket, and have them hustle me straight down to Pueblo.

Or, you should give my family a shout and let them know that the old man is so badly addled by the incipient Alzheimers brought on by my old companion, NPH, that they better get him checked into a “memory care” unit of the nearest nursing home. Pronto.

But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that things aren’t that bad and you do get the drift of what I’ve been beavering away at over the last few years in this blog.

Now, if this “scheme” comes out of the blue to you, I think I can understand. And I certainly won’t hold it against you. Heck, even as I was writing this post, I reviewed some of the material I’ve posted about my experiences with bipolar and Alzheimer’s and thought, “How in the world did that long, rambling thing contribute to where I’d like this to end up?”

A Matter Of Perspective?

But, I can only hope that I’m just too close to this thing. My life. This blog. These posts that I’ve read, and reread, and poked, and prodded so many times. So close to it all that I sometimes fear that I’ve lost the forest for the trees.

But, come what may, I’m determined to soldier on. True, there’s a few more posts to go, maybe even a few as one or two, before I’ll be ready to start wrapping things up for the memoir. And, no doubt, some extraneous events in my life will pop up to distract me from keeping the main thing the main thing. But that’s okay. My life’s like most of yours: it’s never proceeded in a nice, linear fashion. And this blog’s pretty much the same.

But, on the other hand, as I’m rounding the turn into the home stretch for age seventy one, no-one lives forever. Including me. And if I ever want this memoir to see the light of day, I’d better keep my nose to the grind stone. And hope, and pray, that my best laid plans don’t gang aft a-gley.