Life

A Big Move

/ Christopher / 1 Comment

Today my parents closed on a house in Nashville. The house I grew up in for half of my life will soon belong to a new family.

When I first learned my mom and dad were looking to move from Northern Virginia, I selfishly threw a bit of a fit. This was…is home. That miserable rush hour traffic around the Capital Beltway was a strange sense of pride when talking with outsiders. No matter where I go, I will always be a Virginian.

But I moved to San Francisco. And my sister is working on her PhD in Maryland. The nest emptied a long time ago. Who am I to try to put up a roadblock to something I know my family thought long and hard about.

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Winding Down, Gearing Up

/ Christopher / Leave a comment

As our wedding approaches, all of the running around, both literally and figuratively inevitably comes to an end. And then the official preparations for the ceremony and celebration begin. I don’t realize how much of my time and energy I actually devote to all of this stuff until I stop to assess my to-do list. Then I realize that we’ve done a lot to get to this point, especially when it comes to managing vendors nearly 2,000 miles away.

That sort of reminds me of the realizations that come out of participating in #dayofdiabetes. We automate and internalize so much when it comes to managing this disease, that taking a thorough look at all we do can be an exhausting exercise. There’s a lot that has to happen for things (diabetes, weddings, whatever…’things’ is intentionally vague) to go right. Every now and then, try taking a break to recognize all of the hard work and effort that you put into…whatever you put hard work in to.

I’ve certainly learned a lot throughout this entire process.

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What It Takes

/ Christopher / 3 Comments

I don’t often stop and think about what it takes to stay alive, mostly because it’s a dark path to travel. Whether I like it or not, no matter how hard I try to isolate it, diabetes is on my mind constantly. It has to if I want to simply be.

I could play the Kevin Bacon game with my life’s decisions and almost all of them, one way or another, can trace their origins or impact on diabetes.

Which makes the simple process of spending three minutes swapping out a cartridge in my insulin pump a much more complex process. Because those three minutes grant me another 3-4 days of life. Those three minutes are an investment in my future.

But I can’t plan too far ahead, because I know I’ll need another 3 minutes this weekend to re-up on my lease on life.

See how this can get dark in a hurry? And I’m just speaking in loosely cobbled together metaphors.

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