Derek Thompson grew up in South Charleston, Ohio, where he received a BA in communication in 2005 at Wittenberg University. He then pursued a corporate sales career at AT&T where he excelled in the high paced sales environment up until 2008.
During this time he experienced his first manic episode which changed everything. He was diagnosed as bipolar and struggled to understand what his new diagnosis meant. To try and cope with his confusion he started to write a blog, which eventually turned into a humorous memoir.
Derek currently resides on one of his family's farms in rural Ohio.
You started a blog before you wrote your book and mentioned it being very therapeutic. Can you tell us why you started blogging?
Sure, it's my humorous memoir about my bipolar life as a Millennial that's organized as a mood chart rather than by chronological order. After my first manic episode and bipolar diagnosis in 2008 I spent almost a year reading everything I could find over bipolar from spiritual books to memoirs. While much of this information was helpful I never found anything I could relate to; something I could get engaged with. So when I decided to start writing my blog as a therapeutic release I tried to write in a way that would be entertaining and engaging to people like me out there living with bipolar, which just happened to include a lot of sarcasm. Then last year after complaining enough to myself that there wasn't a voice out there representing me I decided to put the book together. In short it's a story of being young and feeling lost, dealing with heartbreak and still finding plenty to laugh about.
Can you tell us what’s inside your book that would be terrifying?
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