Today’s Prompt: Write a letter to an older you (tell us what age you’re writing to!). What do you want to ask yourself? What lesson do you want to make sure you remember?

To be honest with you, this prompt was very easy. Well at least to write. Why you may ask yourself? Well I get to tell myself corny jokes and even better know that I will get my jokes. Apparently, sometimes my jokes are missed by people. For instance, the other day while skiing, I had stopped in the gear shop on the mountain. A guy walks in with his helmet on and after looking for a few minutes asks the sales associate if he could see one of the baseball caps on the wall. I turned to the guy and said, “sir you might want to reconsider I don’t think this will fit on your head….” (Cricket, cricket, cricket) Why do I even try sometimes?

So without further distraction:

Dear Brian of 31 years 7 months and 7 days,

I want to talk to you about the things you did today that will impact your life greatly tomorrow. You got up. You had a small panic attack about forgetting something important. You heard Confessions and Baptized a baby. You had lunch. You hung out with a friend. You had a good day. The food you ate was amazing. You tested before you ate and had a BG of 109. You swagged the waffle and fresh fruit. You had frozen yogurt and more fresh fruit for dessert. You swagged that as well. Sometimes these self serve yogurt places will wreck havoc on your sugars when you start drooling over all of the fruit. But you know what you gave it the old college try. That is what really matters. While this message is only a day old, the message is one that I would be writing you 5, 10, 15, 20… years down the road. Each day you have an option to eat what you want. You can choose to make healthy choices or you can choose to make less than healthy choices and indulge in all the awesome food. The things is this is your choice and your decision. How you live your life, how you treat yourself is yours alone. Never let fear keep you from doing something, more so from eating something. Never let fear of other judging you or the fear of a high glucose reading prevent you from doing something you want. While you may not always get things right, this is what that pump attached to your waist is for.

Paltrow, is there to help you live life to the best of your ability. She is a tool to provide you with the insulin you want/need. This is what your pump is for. Obviously, you shouldn’t be overindulging or doing stuff you shouldn’t all the time. Yet, to prohibit oneself from eating something amazing because of the carb content or the current number on your meter is crazy. Granted, we have been pumping for quite some time now, you a little longer than me, but we more or less know what we are doing. Never fear the tech, never fear the number you are seeing. At the end of the day would you rather remember the awesome chocolate chip cookie the size of your head that you ate or the fact that because you were over 150 you didn’t eat it. No matter what you do, sometimes the high numbers will happen.

Mind you, this reminder is not meant to serve as an excuse to gorge oneself at an all you can eat buffet place. That is just stupid. Yet, making informed decisions and choices with some lapses is fine. Don’t get me wrong, I love the shiny straight line on B.A.S.C. too, but that can be boring too. Life is not a straight line. It is going to have its ups and downs. It is up to you to know how to handle and treat those ups and downs that matters. Otherwise as mom never used to tell us: “Make good choices.”

Seriously though, smile, enjoy the day, and don’t get to stressed or passive aggressive with the person you want to. You know at the end of the day, it will honestly all be for naught.

As always with kindest regard,

Brian P. Quinn the Awesome

P.S. A special shout out and picture for my dear awesome friend Meri. She deserves this shout out and picture…. I love you Meri.