Hydroponics, Doomsday Prepping, and Salsa. All I have to do is mention these things to my wife and she knows exactly what I'm talking about. These are just a few, but notable, examples of how my hypomania has shown itself in the last few years.

Hydroponics - I went on a 1 month kick of massive research because I was going to save my family $$$ and give us healthy food to eat at the same time. Win-win, right? I had most of it worked out but had no yet spent much money on anything, thankfully, before I came down from this hypomanic episode. It's a great running joke in my house.

Doomsday Prepping - a more costly and time-consuming jaunt. I was pre-bipolar diagnosis and coinciding with the beginning of The Walking Dead, I went through several prepping stages over about two years. I did spend a lot of money, but I had a good job at the time. We just started having kids so this was definitely a huge factor. Most of my prepping stuff is gone, but to this day, I still have a box of gas masks and NBC filters in my garage. They're probably useless but I can't throw them away for whatever reason. Great for a nice smile when I remember what's in that box.

Salsa - this was a fairly recent one when I went hypomanic for just a week or so. I was randomly inspired one day by a celebrity chef and his amazing fire-roasted salsa. So inspired that I spent about $60 on ingredients for ONE batch of salsa. I also only gave myself just over two hours to make it all, including shopping for the ingredients, prep, and fire-roasting the peppers and veggies. By the time I was done, I was wiped out and had come down from that episode. I have a culinary arts degree so hypomania often manifests itself in the form of various cooking inspirations - and the associated waste of money for these excursions. I've learned to "sleep on" my food ideas now so that helps save a lot of money.

I just thought I would share this with my fellow BPer's out there. We all have experienced these things. It gets embarrassing sometimes, but we have to be able to laugh at ourselves.

Feel free to share your stories. I'd love to read them.