Launch of The Bipolar Millionaire
At
Garden District Book Shop
Cradled in the Rink and the Garden District
Presentation
By
The book’s author, John E. Wade II
As a CPA for 29 years, I didn’t get many opportunities for speeches or presentations. Actually I don’t remember any. So I did a speech for the Republican Women of Uptown as I endorsed and explained my support for Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin for president.
I had practiced that speech and it came off well, yet I was very nervous. So for the book speech I was fortunate to find a wonderful speech teacher/singer/actress who really helped me a lot. But I will take some of the credit—I practiced a lot, the well-known “secret” of good speeches.
The subject matter, my memoir, literally my life, made the event very important to me. I described the book by explaining each part of the title.
I noted the decades of travails and healing of my bipolar disorder, internalized stigma, and informed kindness. I explained that the suicide attempts, completed suicides and patients harmed by others far outnumber those mentally ill individuals who harm others, although this is what the news chooses to highlight.
I described the wealth in my family, tightly held by my father until his death. I told of my becoming a multimillionaire from inheritances from my mother and father, but mostly from my father who was on the Aflac board of directors from 1963 till 1975 and who accumulated his stock up until his death in 2002. At first I increased my net worth by good investing with the able help of my friend and full service broker. Then the calling of writing, producing television toward heaven on earth and other non-investment type ventures lowered my net worth—but I didn’t commit one of Gandhi’s deadly sins: wealth without work. And while I have a lower net worth than my inheritance, I still am a multimillionaire with no debt.
The Operation is difficult to describe due to its enormity and length of time—late 1998 till the present. The huge goals are the thing that make it somewhat comprehensible; to help cure my bipolar disorder, to guide me spiritually, and to make me a force in the Republican Party. Decades ago, a very credible gentleman told me of programs like this—when a program would find an absolutely incurable alcoholic and no matter how long it took or whatever it took, they would cure the person of that affliction. The person would have to have money. I was not told why, but you can see from above why this was necessary. If the Operation was going to extreme lengths over long periods of time, they wanted the subject of the Operation to be able to “pay back” their work voluntarily, yet fruitfully and substantially.
The methodology of the Operation was transactional analysis. We are each born with a mind, body and what I call a “little piece of God.” Freudian psychologists thought the first five years of a person’s life determined the rest of it. Modern psychologists and psychiatrists don’t agree. Things like marriages, job losses, awards, deaths, many things can have an effect in some manner. The Operation has—since late 1998—been sending me all sorts of “impressions,” thousands and thousands and thousands of them—and it has accomplished those three goals that I mentioned previously.
The Operation wasn’t entirely easy with me—at times it was and at times it wasn’t—but it created resilience. All and all, I now consider the Operation to have been a benevolent force.
I feel that in my 69 unusual years I have refused to be a victim. Not just the Operation, but my bipolar disorder, handling of my career and wealth, marriages and divorces, academic life—all my life—has earned me a meaningful degree of wisdom. Thank you, Dear God.
