Paper 1 - Analyzing a blog

My Crazy Bipolar Life

I chose to talk analyze a blog: mycrazybipolarlife.wordpress.com. The blog is run by a single 30 year old female from Scotland. She has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Psychosis, Agoraphobia, Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Anxiety, Depression and Self Harm. She has received professional help for her mental condition for 7 to 8 years, and a lot of her problems are a result from childhood abuse and trauma, and a stillborn baby in 2007. In the blog she writes very personally, biased, and non-subjectively about her daily life, ups and downs, with no filter. Her texts involve serious themes such as depression, self-harm and suicidal thoughts, among other things. Jan 17th: “There was blood everywhere and two of the cuts were very deep and gaping open wide” is an example of what writing you might expect to read. This is an interesting and highly personal blog, and it is fascinating to read about her life and thoughts. In this essay I will analyze her visual aspects of her blog, her language choice, the content and goal of the blog and last I will take a deeper look at her audience.

First I want to discuss the visual aspects of the blog. What first catches my eye is her heading, which says: “My Crazy Bipolar Life” with vivid, white font (something close to the font style “Curls MT”). The heading has a pretty simple design; the background is dark purple, black and light pink spots just fluting together. She also has two very clear white stars as a part of the heading-background, two more abstract ones, and a lot of stars that are so abstract that it is hard to imagine them as stars at all. Her vivid and abstract heading can be seen as a parallel to the author’s life: A life that is a big mess, with a lot of confusion. The dramatic color contrasts can illustrate her extreme ups and downs in mood, which is a good definition of how it is to live a life with bipolar disease. Her clear stars can be a symbol of her good days, and her hope to one day feel healthy again. Her more diffuse stars might represent the days where she is really depressed and can’t see any solution out of this disorder. The rest of the blog is divided into five tabs. One of the tabs is Home: where her daily blog is located. Another is My story, with a short description of who she is and what this blog is about. A third tab, that I find important to mention, is Distractions: A tab for people that want to learn more about mental disorders or seek help. The rest of the design of her daily blog is simple, black text on a white background. The meaning behind this can be that the author wants to make her text clear, simple and easy to follow for her audience. In addition to benefitting her audience, with a structured blog design, she might benefit herself if she uses her blog as a therapy-alternative.

When it comes to the content of the blog, the author writes about everything that happens in her life and her mind with no filter. Her blog includes serious but important themes such as voices in her head, anxiety, drinking, agoraphobia (“An abnormal fear of open or public places” Thefreedictionary), depression, self harm, friendship, studying, suicidal thoughts and psychologists. She gives us detailed descriptions about her self-harming. Here is one example from Dec. 17th 2012 “I have written words all over my body at various times but written them with blades. I have cut to stupidly deep levels where I have literally been sitting with a huge gaping hole on an arm or leg.” This example tells us that she is a really sick person, but honest, and brave since she has typed down very personal facts. To me this makes the blog very fascinating to read. To some, this may seem like too much detailed information. When I read, I sometimes just want to throw up, but I keep reading because there is something that captivates me with her texts. On Jan. 17th , 2013, she wrote about her voices in her head: “I still feel extremely paranoid and the head crazies are coming out with all sorts of random quotes but I’m trying really really hard to ignore them…” With “crazies” she means her voices in her head; she has given her voices this name. This is a good example of her content, her pure thoughts about what’s going on in the head of a person struggling with a psychological disorder. It varies, however, how conscious or not conscious she is. In this example, she is very aware and shows us how to tackle these voices with ignoring her voices, but as a part of the bipolar disorder she also writes about her happy-time. This example is from Aug. 9th 2012. “I’m sitting here feeling really content and happy, I really like him and I think he feels the same about me.” It is interesting how extreme her mood changes can be, and this blog is a really good blog for people who want to get a better insight into how fantastic and awful life can be with bipolar disorder. With this said, you learn a lot about this disorder just by following her blog. Others might find it directly offensive to read her blog. Feb. 16th she wrote “I guess if you do it then you’ll know what I mean.” In this quote she is talking about self harming, a good example of how “tunnel-thinking” your thoughts can turn into if you are mentally sick.

The most obvious characteristic of her language is how conversational her language is: “And that’s what I needed – everything to be OK again, my head to stop being fucked up and mental, the voices to stop screaming, my thoughts to slow the fuck down.” In this example, from Feb. 9th 2012, she talks about reasons for trying heroin (which she did). Her language is characterized by a lot of thoughts typed down. She just writes the first thoughts and words that come to her mind, pretty often these are swear words. Having a conversational style goes very well along with writing a personal blog, it makes the blog just even more personal and give us as an audience the best possible insight into her physical and mental life. In general she uses far more negative loaded words, than positive loaded words. A few examples of this are hate, bad, stressful, crap, shit and horrible. The reason for this might be that when you are struggling with such a complex disease it is hard to focus on all the positive around you. When it comes to her sentence structure, her sentences can vary a lot. One example can be a long list of small sentences: “The anxiety is horrible, lots of physical symptoms, heart feels like it’s palpitating, I feel quite hot and flushed, I have a strange nervous feeling in my stomach, I have thoughts telling me it’s only going to get worse the more attention I give it.” In this example from Nov. 12th, 2012 she sums up what she is feeling in that exact moment when she is trying to figure out how to catch up in life.
Her meaning or goals of the blog might be many. Her main goal with this blog must be to use the blog as an outlet for her own emotions, which, according to her, is somewhat therapeutic. Under the tab “my story” she confirms this statement: “…it really helps me to express myself better than I ever could vocally. I set this up as a place for me to rant and moan, to remember happy times, to help myself recognize what was going on in my life and what was affecting my moods.” She also says “it has helped me find other people who can relate to the same things as me.” So the blog might work as a center for people with the same conditions to meet, exchange experiences, emotionally support each other and learn from each other.
A third goal with this blog is that she also uses the blog to help people with the same problems as her, with a lot of tips and links. The blog can also be helpful for healthy people who want to learn more about psychological disorders. When it comes to the rhetorical tools she is using, she is definitely using pathos for the most part. She is talking about her life and explaining how she feels in every situation, and with this said her goal might be trying to evoke emotions, values or beliefs from her readers.

From my own observations, I think the ideal audience is people from 13-40 years old who are struggling mentally whether it is depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety or posttraumatic stress disorder or any other disease that is related to these. Many might find it helpful to read that they are not the only one, and there are other people that are struggling with the same problems as they do. It can be brutal for children under 18 years old to read all the self-harming details, but the reality is that “Approximately 20% of adolescents have a diagnosable mental health disorder,” and, “Suicide is the third leading cause of death in adolescents and young adults” (Source: National Center for Children in Poverty). My point is that both teenagers and adults might be in the reaching group for this blog. But mycrazybipolarlife can also be a useful blog for people who want to learn more about how it is to live with all these mental problems, or for people who are seeking tips about how to “tackle” friends or family that are struggling with psychological disorders. Other people might also find it entertaining to read about the daily life of a “crazy person.”

There are not a lot of people commenting on this blog, but the people who do comment seem like they are very supportive of her. They leave comments such as: “I just wanted you to know you’re not alone I’m right by your side,” and, “I hope we’ll find happiness and meaning soon. I know it’s difficult.” Her commenters tell her over and over again how they understand her, and give her support. Most of the commenters end their comment with an X, which represents a kiss. One person that comments a lot is “The Quiet Borderline (back in hospital).” This person is very supportive and understanding, and also underlines my theory that the main audience is people who have a psychological disorder (Borderline Personality disorder, in this case).
All in all this is a highly personal blog which brings up a lot of serious themes that might be taboo in our society today such as depression, bipolar disorder and other mental problems. The author’s main goal with this blog is to clear her own thinking pattern, but in addition, she is helpful to others dealing with mental disorders or trying to learn more about this topic. Her conversational language allows her to connect with her readers, especially her audience in the age group from 13-40 who are struggling mentally. Even persons who don’t fit this category of audience might find mycrazybipolarlife fascinating.


Sources:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/agoraphobic
http://www.nccp.org/publications/pub_878.html
http://mycrazybipolarlife.wordpress.com/