BOCA INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY

Saturday, January 21st, 2012 10:35 p.m.

I always said to others, "I am here for a good time, not a long time." Well, it used to be a good time but now it just seems like a long time, yet not all that great. In fact, I have been trying for the past couple of weeks to make the long time a good time and I seem to be succeeding but it sure needs certain controls. My status as a pre-diabetic occurred on the Thursday during my monthly visit to the doctor. By the following Tuesday, the doctor's office called and told me I needed some more medication because in five days they figured out I was now a Type 2 diabetic. Thanks guys, it only took you nine months and eight more monthly visits to figure that one out while I suffered the consequences.

In any case, I was bound to end up here with the way I was going about food. I have this great love for cheese, meats and just about everything else, especially sweet stuff.....well, now I have to start thinking differently and eathing differently and you know what, I already feel healthier and it has only been eleven days. So I started to think about people who are obese and how they got that way. Well, most of it has to do with the brain. First they have the natural things that go on in their particular bodies that dictate how well food is digested, goodness is extracted and used or not used up. Our metabolisms are very different and the pressures on us are very different. I finally recognized what my body has been doing for the past sixty-seven years and I have worked back so that I finally understood why I had this great affection for food....largely, to counteract stress. I live with the stress of being left handed in a right handed world. I live with the stress of trying to learn everything while I live with learning disabilities, a disorder of the brain while I have a great thirst for knowledge because of my high level of intelligences. I also have the stress of not being able to get an education while everyone else seemed to able to do so. That turned me into a class clown, got me a number of trips to the principal's office or the back room in high school for the strap across my hands. I did not know I was a bad kid in class or always dissrupting the class, I was just being my normal friendly self looking for a way of using my quick wit to make someone else laugh. Beyond my school days it has given me a happy nature and was generally well accepted in social situations or when I was at the microphone at a convention or meeting. However, in school it was a no-no.

Life is a journey, as I have often said and as I read somewhere recently, that today is a gift.

 "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery and today is a gift....that is why we call it the present."

  Kind of has a nice rhythm to it, doesn't it? We some times forget that our small troubles are little things compared to those of others. Take the case of the gorgeous fashion model and online fashion magazine editor who is recovering from an airplane accident. No.... the plane did not crash, it landed, she got out and absent-mindedly walked to the front of the airplane to go around it and not the rear. End result was that the propeller blade took off her arm and she lost her eye as well. Not the pretty sight she used to be but she is still alive and getting on with her life.

Another of my favourites is the one that goes,

"I felt sad because I did not have any shoes.....until I saw a child without any feet." 

Life is only a journey that takes us to the end. How soon that is depends on you, your lifestyle, your upbringing, your intelligence, your health, your race, your beliefs, your values, your education, your skills and your willingness to go down untrodden paths. I am sure there are a lot of other things I could also add to that list but these ones are enough to make you realize that you are a pawn on a chessboard and someone else is moving the pieces most of the time. Even if you become the king on the board, you won't win until you are the last man standing or you have cornered the other king into a place he cannot get out of. Becoming that someone who moves the pieces is your goal but your ability to get there is already decided for most of you by the things you and your family bring to the table. I like ot say that we all left the farm at some point...that move from an agricultural hunter-gatherer existance which our ancestors lived for hundreds of thousands if not millions of years and we moved to the other side of the chessboard. There we began to go beyond what was expected of us and not just accept what we learned at home from our own father. I have a new found respect for my great great great great grandfather, Allan Carswell who lived in the 1700s. The last of the farmers in my family, he agreed to let his sons become Wrights and builders. His own two sons became very wealthy along the way I suspect and lived a hard but healthy life until their days were done. Success allowed their families to spend their summers enjoying the fruits of their labour and sent their sons and grandsons on to better things.

Financially, my own life was not a big success but from a creative viewpoint, I feel I accomplished a lot more that will remain behind to be remembered by than either my father or grandfather left behind outside of decendants. They got me on that one. Still, I am excited because my own daughter is due to make me a grandfather in 2012....and it's about time too. Now, if only I could get my son to find a girl and get married, that would be nice. However, all in good time, I suppose. That is up to him and his life....a future grandfather has little else to look forward to as the end draws near.....heck....only another thirty-two years and a bit before I hit a hundred. Been there twice already....naw, not a hundred....ha!  First thirty-two were great, second thirty-two were tough but final thirty-two will tell the tale. So far, ehhhhhh? Have a good "today" tomorrow, it's the first day of the rest of your life.