Yesterday I realized how crazy I have been lately with the spirituality stuff, and possibly because of that, I consumed the stimulants like no one's business. I had about six coffees, ten diet cokes, and two packs of cigarettes. That is way overboard! The interesting thing is that last night I slept the best I had in about three months. I was in bed early (before midnight, I think) and slept almost eight hours. Then, after getting up for a while, I slept some more until about noon. I feel very refreshed and good now.

I would have slept the entire day away, but I had a meeting at 1PM to talk about a new volunteer endeavor I might be part of. It is a think tank dedicated to finding a way for the faith community to get involved in helping people with mental illness. As it is right now, we will be looking at a model that is working in Scotland (I hope I'm remembering right). The program calls out for the establishment of a mental health community chaplaincy. I have some literature I have to read before the first official meeting of the think tank, so please forgive me if I'm not up to speed on describing everything just yet. I'll let you know how it goes and what shape the project takes.

On another note, I'm thinking of starting a college scholarship for high school seniors at Wayzata High School. The scholarship would be an essay or creative writing competition, and the scholarship would be given to the person with the best essay/creative writing composition. To participate, the student will have to read my book (Regular & Decaf) and then write a composition that includes certain information/ideas that are presented in the book. Additionally, the student will have to have a certain number of other students (those not participating in the competition) read the composition and sign that they have read it. The point of this whole thing will be to raise awareness about mental illness in the high school class, as well as to equip the incoming college freshmen with some understanding of mental illness so they can look out for their friends in the collegiate environment.

I am no longer feelings so embarrassed about having been so crazy with the religious stuff, but I'm sort of feeling guilty that I'm abandoning "Andrew Gadtke Evangelism Ministries." The guilt is coming because I don't know (and can never tell) if what I had been experiencing over the past weeks was hyperreligiosity or real faith. It it is hyperreligiosity, then I'm glad it is gone. However, if it were real faith experiences, then I don't want to turn my back on what God is leading me to do.

So, I'm torn. But here is why I decided to move forward and abandon my new ministries: Every time I try to do any evangelism stuff, I almost always fail and never help the seeker. It doesn't matter how hard I try, it seems there is never any fruit. With the mental illness stuff, however, I am almost always succeeding and there is a lot of fruit. I'm helping many, many people with this book, and I don't feel it would be right to distract myself at this time from all the good I'm doing in the mental illness sector to pursue my dream of international evangelism.

I do get burned out with all the mental illness stuff, because I eat and sleep mental illness. It is always so salient in my mind, and there never seems to be an escape for me. I am not letting the illness define me as a person though. I don't think of myself as an illness. Instead, I'm a person with schizophrenia. Yet still, all I do is stuff with mental illness, and sometimes it gets so tiring. I suppose it is necessary in today's society to specialize in something, and I guess this is as good of a specialty as any. Part of the problem is that I like to philosophize and come up with theories and new ways to think about things, and in my nonprofit work I haven't done that at all. I need an outlet for my thoughts and affinity for puzzling over problems. This new think tank idea sounds great, and hopefully it will be an outlet for me to think at a high level. It might be just what I need in my life right now.