Today’s personal Friday post comes from Associate Editor Nick Masercola.
“I’m really worried about graduating,” she said. The nods from the rest of the group echoed Emily’s sentiment. She took the last drag from her cigarette and stamped it out underneath her shoe. “I don’t know anyone who’s found a job yet.”
A couple of them looked at me, as if hoping I had some sort of advice for them. I shrugged. “It’s going to be rough. For a while, at least.”
She laughed. “You’re a barrel of sunshine, Nick.”
This past weekend I went back to my college to visit everyone who was graduating this year. It was a good time, and I was glad to see some friends that I hadn’t in a while, but there was a haze of anxiety that hung over every interaction. I couldn’t blame them. Graduation, which (I assume) was at one point a momentous occasion is now seen as the beginning of hard times ahead—a slowly chiming church bell ushering you into a broken economy and kneecapped job market. And unfortunately, I couldn’t assuage any fears.
Half of my income is writing based, and the other half is random stuff I do to keep the money flowing—and I’m one of the luckiest 2011 graduates that I know. Most of my friends didn’t get steady jobs until this past January, with two (an economics and accounting major, respectively) not getting any bites until May. Yes, that’s right, it took them a year. And while things haven’t gone too bad for me, I took a lot of risks that I wouldn’t recommend to others (I took my savings, subleased a place in NYC for the summer to try and find a job, literally got one a week before my money ran out) so I have no idea what to tell people, since things could’ve easily went belly-up for me.
I’ve been told I’m a determined person ( my parents prefer stubborn) because I keep heading for what I want and somehow I manage to make my cockamamie plans work out. I’d like to take the credit for inherently being a go-getter, but I think that would be doing my diabetes a disservice. I was diagnosed two weeks before my first year of high school, and because of that, had a very short amount of time to get my act together. I would argue having to adjust my life so tremendously in such a small period gave me the skills to overcome obstacles through sheer force of will (and tremendous heapings of good luck). It’s not just me either. Most of the diabetics I know are also very adept at handling challenges, and forge ahead much more readily than many others.
I think that part of it comes from the resilience of having to learn to control your blood sugars, but I believe another part of it (though many might not care to admit) is that diabetes makes you think about mortality.
Now let me pump the brakes for a second: many, MANY diabetics live to a ripe old age. And with good control over your blood sugar, there is no telling how far you can go. But I do think that anyone with a chronic disease is at least more aware of how quickly time passes, and that you have to seize it while you can. I’ve realized it certainly informs a lot of my decisions.
For instance, last week I was talking to a friend of mine who was saying how he was probably going to have to work a job he hated for 3 years before he had enough experience to get into something he liked. I didn’t like that plan, and said he should do whatever he could to get out of it and find something else he enjoys more in the meantime.
“Nick, it’s not that long. I’ll be fine.”
“Three years is way too long to be doing something you hate so much.”
“Not in the grand scheme of things,” he said.
I shook my head. “It’s too long. You’re planning like you’re going to die at 80. What if you die at 40? Spending three years being miserable sounds like a much bigger waste then.”
For better and for worse, diabetes has made me look at the years ahead differently. You need to do what you want, and do it as early as you can, because you never know what the future holds. Figure out just what you want out of this grand adventure, and do everything to get to it. While I yearn for a Practical Cure so that this wasn’t something I thought about often, I have to recognize the odd ways diabetes has shaped my outlook.
We talk a lot about the importance of goals and missions at the JDCA, and in the spirit of this philosophy here’s my list of things I want to do by the year 2025, besides having helped do my part to assist in the creation of a Practical Cure. If after reading you feel like sharing a few of your goals, that’d be great. By 2025 I want to have:
1. Killed an audience at an open mic night.
2. Traveled to South America and Australia (currently, I haven’t ever left the country).
3. Gotten a job writing in the videogame industry.
4. Found a place I can live in for a while (NYC will not be where I spend middle age).
5. Played in a death metal band.
Tall orders, to be sure, but certainly doable with enough blood, sweat, and coffee. A dash of good luck is always welcome too. What do you want to have accomplished by 2025? And has diabetes ever influenced the way you plan out your future? Let me know below.
(image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.com)
