Some days surprise you. Yesterday was one of those. Any day holds the potential to be life changing, but I would not have hedged my bets on Saturday turning into one of them.

I woke with a hangover more emotional than physical and wished immediately for the sun to set.

Bu the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance was sponsoring a speaker at the college downtown. It was written in ink in my brand spanking-new Stephen Covey weekly planner to attend. So I forced myself to comply with my own plans and go.

Andy Behrman is the author of "Electroboy," the somehow humorous story of an East Coast man who suffered 14 years of skyrocketing mania and depression on a headline-making scale. In the early 2000s, he was arrested and imprisoned for selling counterfeit art. The trial was heavily covered in New York City. Before that, he had pimped, prostituted himself, squandered millions and attempted suicide. After the trial and his diagnosis, he was imprisoned, abandoned by all but his parents and tried 38 medications with no lasting results. Electro-shock therapy saved his life.

Shooting on a movie (I believe it's HBO) about his memoirs begins in a few months. Tobey Maguire, the man with the most expressive eyes I've ever seen, stars.

Andy Behrman does not resemble Tobey Maguire. But face-to-face, he speaks succinctly, listens well and has a charming smile.

He was a crappy speaker. Ill prepared, off the cuff, the story rife with "ums," and eternally long. But his manner is positive and he finds the humor in his story. He was inspiring not only in his wellness but in his success. Despite the public and private horrors of his past, his story has a happy ending. Since the book was published, he met and married a script writer working on the movie whose bipolar mother took her life when she was a child. They have a 1-year-old girl, named Kate after her dead grandmother.

A few of us were invited to dinner with him after the talk, and I was seated next to him, which pleased me inordinately. It also pleased me to realize I was sitting at a large table of bleeding-heart liberals. We all talked about stigma, about the popularization of mental illness, about the lack of interest the issue still inspires in people with the money to make a difference. I talked with Andy about royalties and the business of becoming a published author, about the weight of e-mails from people who tell him their loves ones lost the battle with their disorder.

Certain he heard it every day, I told him I had a half-finished book of my own. He asked what made it different. He listened intently. He told me my single excerpt painted an incredible visual. He told me to finish it.

There is room and demand, he said, for more such books. Most of them are badly written celebrity tales that inspire little respect, he said, and precious few women have written about it. (At that point, I couldn't bear to tell him I have fuzzy memories of his book, and did not own a copy for him to sign.)

I was certain his interest was situational and passing, but he gave me his card as we stood to go, and asked that I keep him posted on my project.

Now, I feel I owe him. And maybe that's precisely the kind of pressure I need.