Someone pointed out that September is suicide prevention month. Instead of just reposting a meme, I wanted to share a story that’s very meaningful to me, something that keeps me going even when I’m at my darkest.

The man in the picture to the right is R. Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller, one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century. When he was 32 years old, he was on the edge of committing suicide. As he was about to drown himself in Lake Michigan, he decided that he still had something to contribute to the world.

Fuller filed 28 patents, and his most popular invention, the geodesic dome, is still used heavily today. Most of his later life was spent teaching and consulting on the global level. He was a huge proponent of renewable energy, and like me, he believed in using technology to solve humanity’s problems.

I try not to go off on rants too often, but something that happened yesterday really bothered me. However, while this is a rant, I’m going to have to get rather technical to complete it.

Also, this is going to get a little personal, if that bothers you, you may want to move on.

Though I’m not very forthcoming about it, I am a type 2 diabetic, as was my mother. And if you don’t know it, being type 2 carries a stigma. You see, there is a genetic component to type 2, but another good way to get it is to overwork your pancreas by eating too much, specifically in the form of simple carbohydrate foods (sugar).

In my case, I probably would have become diabetic eventually, but my weight probably brought it forward 10 to 15 years. I’m aware that I made bad decisions and I’m taking ownership of that. Going as far as to loose 65 pounds in the last 4 months. Coincidentally, that’s the weight of my lawnmower.

So, just in case you’re wondering, type 1 is a completely different animal. It is a genetic condition by which the pancreas just ceases to function and the body is incapable of producing insulin. A lack of insulin raises blood sugar.

Conversely, type 2 is a disease caused by overproduction of insulin, whether caused by abusing simple carbohydrates or genetic propensity, but more likely a combination of both. Because the body is flooded with insulin all the time, it stops responding to it, raising blood sugar. (The blood sugar imbalance being why these diseases are linked. The cause is different, but the effect is the same.)

You may be asking yourself, at this point, where is the rant? Don’t worry, it’s coming.

So, I spend a lot of time studying diabetes, as anyone diagnosed with a chronic, degenerative disease might do (or so you’d think) and I’ve learned a lot about it, not only the conventional wisdom, but I’ve also followed the bleeding edge of nutrition and medical studies. Part of this is hanging out on the diabetes subreddit.

And this is where we come to yesterday. In a thread about being shamed about being diabetic, someone related that they often got nasty looks in their office when the partook of birthday cake. I happened to have an anecdote about ice cream that seemed appropriate to reply with, as cake and ice cream go well together.

I’ll go ahead and leave it here:

We were at a family reunion and I heard my wife’s great uncle say, “Make sure Paul (my father-in-law) gets the sugar free ice cream; he’s diabetic.”

I whispered to my wife, “Don’t tell them I’m diabetic. I want the good ice cream.”

And ironically, in this thread on shaming people for diabetes, someone tried to shame me for making the decision to have regular ice cream. Not only that, but they went as far as to blame America’s high cost of healthcare on me for being overweight and diabetic. I almost responded, but then I remembered not to feed the trolls. The moderators took it down soon thereafter. Still, it stuck in my craw.

And here’s the rant:

First of all, US insurance companies like fat people. They can discriminate against them, and they actually die faster when the get sick, keeping costs down. This scary fact is one of the things motivating me to lose weight.

Second, many sugar-free foods, ice cream is a great example of this, are horrible tradeoffs. In exchange for 50% of the flavor, you’re probably only losing 10% of the calories and 25% of the carbs. Take a smaller scoop, and the physiological effect would be the same.

Thirdly, what you eat over one vacation weekend doesn’t matter in the bigger picture. Eating sugar-free ice cream every day is more carbs than eating fully-sugared ice cream once a week.

That’s pretty much it for the rant part.

This brings me to the biggest problem about type 2 diabetes, the judgement of yourself and others. When I was diagnosed, I was ashamed, I was depressed. But being ashamed and depressed didn’t help me lose weight. It didn’t help me exercise. If anything, it had the opposite effect. I spent a year of my life convinced that no matter what I did, I was going to die young, leaving my wife a widow and hoping I had enough life insurance to take care of her.

It was only after dozens of hours of research that I discovered what I needed to know to fix both my weight and my blood sugar, and hopefully my health.

I’m not sure more shaming is really what I need.

And so it came to pass that I finished my internship at KHP, and this was good. They offered me a position, and initially I accepted, but the stresses of my day job combined with the anxiety I feel from my writing conspired against me, and I ultimately had to renege.

This put me in a bit of limbo, as they were going to publish my next book. But for now, I’m not going to worry about it.

Worry has been a big part of my writing career. I have some anxiety issues and putting myself out there, as you must do when you write, is very difficult for me. Often, when I think about my writing, I get into dark moods, and I wonder whether it isn’t time to give up writing entirely.

So, towards the end of January, I decided to take some time off from writing. I hadn’t taken a break in the last eight years, and my day job was keeping me adequately busy. It’s been a good break. I’ve caught up on my reading, as well as done some beta reading and light editing for others, which has been a positive experience for me. I often think about writing these days, and every day the prospect of starting again seems less painful.

I feel like I have more good books in me, if I can just stop worrying so much and enjoy the process.

So…. it looks like my last update was two months ago. There’s a good reason for this. I’ve been busy doing an intensive edit on a book for KHP, my “final project” of my internship. I don’t know how the author will feel about it–I really went for it with the edits, but my fellow editors seem happy with what I’ve done. I spent a ton of time on it.

Personally, it’s been a tough year with many challenges. I’m kind of happy to see it sliding into the rearview mirror.

In my own writing, I’ve continued to peck away at the Minion of Evil sequel. I’m now sitting just over 40,000 words, and I’m starting to contemplate the transition to the ending. Don’t open the Champagne yet, It’s just a rough draft.

On the other hand, I have submitted Panic No More to KHP–yeah, I know I’m working for them, but I planned to submit it before I took the internship–and they will be releasing it in “January.” Okay, probably more like February.

I wish I had something profound to say at this point to tie everything together, but I’ve never been good at tying things up. How about: Wishing you and yours a happy __Insert your holiday of choice here.__  celebration.

Wow, time can go by quickly. Between work, social commitments, and surgery, this has been a busy summer for me so far.

The surgery seems to have been a success. I’m currently feeling recovery-type pain instead of carpal-tunnel type pain, if that makes sense. I’m still a little weak in that hand, but every weeks is showing improvement.

On the writing front, I don’t have all that much to report. I’m working on the sequel to Minion of Evil. I was around 20,000 words in and I decided to start over with a couple different subplots. Now I’m getting back up to around 8000 words again. I’m also waiting for some beta reader comments on one of my other novels.

I’ve now been an intern at KHP for a month, but it doesn’t feel like it as they haven’t given me anything to do yet. I’ve been promised a pass at Adam J Whitlatch’s new book though, so I’m looking forward to that. I am a little worried that once they do get started they’ll bury me.

So there we are. Nothing big to report.