The Realizes, or, Things I’m Remembering While Navigating the Mid-20’s

Sometimes life just makes me feel this way.

Blog no longer abandoned, just rarely tended to, I am starting to come back around. And while I realize that maybe this whole mess of the 20’s will be one big black hole when I come out of it, at least, knowing that I still have three and a half good years left before I hit that dreaded 3-0 point, that the whole experience, albeit stressful and downright crazy, will be something I look back on triumphantly, and say, “Hey, I did that.” 

Tidbits on my mind tonight: 

1. Diabetes may be a little sh*t, but it’s easier if you do. 

So somehow over the last 5 months I managed to drop my A1C by almost 3%. Last summer it was at a 10. Over a 10. If you don’t know anything about diabetes, a ten is bad. I was scrounging to buy insulin and I was stretching it to its limits. When I quit using my pump it took me a good while before I actually broke down and got a script for lantus. You can imagine how that went. But just taking insulin, eating better, exercising, and testing my blood sugar, not even really “trying,” or even obsessing, got my A1C down to a 7.7. And I feel good. And even though at the time even taking insulin on time and frequently sounded like a scary thing at the time, it’s now just what I do. And it’s OK. And I can do it. Maybe my denial days are over, though I’m sure they’ll return. But for now, I’m gonna tell myself that I am worth taking care of. 

2. Sometimes jobs are just jobs, and that’s okay. 

So working in the travel industry sounds fun and glamorous, and I’ll admit that I’ve learned a lot about the industry and, as Tom lovingly reminds me, have turned into a “hotel snob.”  But sales is not necessarily a fun thing to do. Sometimes it’s downright awful, especially when it’s over the phone where people feel, much like the internet, that you aren’t really a person and hurting your feelings is OK. But it’s teaching me to be less offended, which is somehow helping my self esteem? I digress. More on this at a later date, but for now, I’m making a paycheck, paying my bills, and if I don’t live to get up and go to work in the morning, that’s OK. It doesn’t have to be forever. 

3. Mountaintop moments wouldn’t exist if they happened all the time. 

   So I have all these memories from high school and college that make me extremely happy, most involve sitting outside with a big group of friends singing songs, and almost none involve beer (except a couple). I feel like I don’t have these experiences anymore. Remembering them makes me feel sad, and old. But just because they aren’t happening with the frequency doesn’t mean that they won’t ever happen, and it doesn’t take away from the defining nature of those moments and times in my life. If anything it tells me three things that define who I am and what I love: being outside in the evening, being with good people, and music. Knowing those things I can look for opportunities to create these moments, and treasure them when they happen.

4. We are still young, but not as young. 
   Sometimes I’ll joke about feeling old, or getting old. Facts remain I am older than I have ever been. But so are you. Just because I hang out with 22 year olds sometimes doesn’t make 26 “old.” I am still young, but yes, I have to get up and go to work in the morning, and yes, I have to pay my rent, and no, I can’t stay out drinking until 1am three times a week and still manage to do these things. So I will still enjoy moments when I feel young, I will still relish in the fact that I am still (legally) single and childless, but I will still be in bed by midnight so I can actually function like  a human being. 
5. Love isn’t easy. 
   And I don’t mean just romantic love. Loving yourself is hard. Especially when you have things constantly thrown at you saying you aren’t good enough (cough*media*cough). You aren’t skinny enough, or curvy enough, or fit enough, or smart enough, or you don’t have enough. But if you don’t love yourself, you will continue on this miserable existence and eventually nobody will want to be around you. So if you’re extroverted like me, you better learn to love yourself or you will hate yourself more. Because you’re OK. You’re just a human, and you make mistakes and you can’t expect to be perfect. 
   And yes maybe I’m taking about romantic love, because your 20s are crazy in this factor, and in today’s world if you’re not engaged by the time you graduate from college chances are you will go though a string of not-so-good relationships before you actually settle down. You are not abnormal. But when you do find someone you kind of like, and want to like, hang out with a lot, you should realize it’s actually going to take a lot of work to make that work. 
6. If you hate your life, change it. 
   Like for a while there, I seriously hated my life with a burning searing passion. Then I realized I had two choices: I could learn to enjoy where I was and what I was learning, or I could change my life. The only option that I wouldn’t allow myself to take was the one that kept me where I was. So now, yes there may be something on the horizon that will change my life completely. Some things WILL be changing, and soon, and some things might stay the same, but either way I plan on doing my best to be OK with whatever happens.   
7. And it’s OK to be sad or lonely sometimes, because you are human. 
   Understand that emotions are emotions, and they aren’t always “good” or “bad.” 

 

Seriously, I just want to be cool.

I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember writing.  I started writing short stories when I was little, kept journals off and on, and countless times started (and sometimes, finished) “novels” about my daydreams (primarily about boys) when I was in jr. high and high school. I’ve been blogging since the early high school days, using old standards like Free Open Diary and Xanga, back when those sites were cool and everybody used them to gossip about one another and talk about our new boyfriends.

I never really thought about blogging about diabetes until I “accidentally” stumbled across the DOC two summers ago and realized, ‘Hey, I’m like, living with this thing that is pretty complicated and hard but also kind of entertaining.’ And I never wanted to blog about depression (Because OMG my future employers are probably reading this as we speak! HI GUYS, HIRE ME!) until I realized how common it actually is in America (a veritable mental health crisis comparable to the obesity epidemic – maybe related to – there is a thesis topic for you) and if an employer didn’t realize that a high percentage of his or her employees is probably already dealing with this disease and their company is functioning quite well, thank you very much, then I didn’t really want to work for them anyway. (Whew. Run-ons are my specialty).

But seriously, I just want to be cool.

No, I don’t have a personalized URL or any fancy advertisers and no, I don’t come up on the first page when you google “diabetes blogs.”  But all I want to do is become a certified diabetes educator and write and talk to people about diabetes for a living.  Is that so much to ask?

I even went so far as to list Sarahndipity as my employer on my facebook page. Heck, even my neglected LinkedIn profile focuses on my work in the diabetes community.

The bottom line is, living with diabetes isn’t easy. No one has all the answers, and that’s really the message I want to send. The whole damn thing is about trial and error, over and over again, and it’s a bit of a far reach for a perfectionist like myself. (Hear that, future employers? My weakness right there in grey and white – now you can skip that awkward question in my interview). (But it’s ok if you don’t).  But that’s the whole point of d-blogging, right? To let others know that they are not alone in their frustrations and idiosyncrasies that come with having a chronic illness?

Ron Burgundy is kind of a big deal. People know him.

Sometimes, we just have to remind ourselves of that. The reason we’re here, the reason we wake up at 5am and can’t sleep because we have too many bloggy thoughts floating around in our brains (well, I mean, I do that).

I mean, this isn’t 2001. There are a lot of bloggers out there in the interweb world. And, for now, I don’t feel like I stand out. But honestly, I don’t have to be kind of a big deal (although I wouldn’t mind it), so long as I am helping people along the way.

That’s the most important thing, right?