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My Own 365 Thanks to Steve Richert

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

2012 brought a lot of great things into my life. This is not going to be a post that talks about all of them, but just one thing in particular that has caused me to create a challenge for myself.  I’m sure most of you have heard of Steve Richert from Living Vertical and his Project 365 in which he will be climbing every day for 365 straight days.  I met Steve in Indianapolis at the Roche Social Media Summit and hearing him speak gave me a lot of motivation.  From time to time I tend to lose that motivation and get into a lazy valley and can’t seem to get myself out of it.  But then I think about the great and awesome things that others are doing that are so much more difficult than the things that I am trying to accomplish, and it tends to pull me out of that rut.

This all leads into my own 365 day challenge.  I have challenged myself to post for 365 straight days.  If Steve can climb a freaking mountain or a wall every day for 365 days, I think that I can write a blog post, or post a picture or an interview or do something for 365 straight days.

So, thank you Steve for challenging me without even knowing it.

Happy New Year 2013

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

Happy New Year everybody.  I am a firm believer that if you needed the calendar to switch from December 31, 2012 to January 01, 2013 just to get your life changed, you are already behind on your goals.  However, if you have set goals for 2013, I wish you the best of luck on being successful on those changes.

Kerri wrote a post the other day about bringing balance into her life.  I think that is the best word that I could use to explain where I am looking to take my life in 2013.  I typically break down my goals into three words for the year, and each of those three words are broken down into the three areas of my life (diabetes, work, family).  I was struggling finding three words this year, and when I read the post that I mentioned above, I knew that all three words could be summed up by the one world, balance.

I need balance in my diabetes because my blood sugars are all over the place.  Bringing balance to this area will help all aspects of my life.

Bringing balance into my work is needed because after taking the step in 2012 to run my business full time, as opposed to just a freelancer, things have grown at a fast pace and balancing the work and organization that goes along with it can be demanding and difficult.

My work and family also go hand in hand because in 2012 I was working 12-16 hours a day, six days a week.  That did not leave me with a lot of time to spend with Amanda or to travel to see my family. 2013 is bringing a wedding for Amanda and myself, and hopefully a lot more traveling to see my family more frequently.  I need balance to be able to make it all work.

Grow a business, connect more with family, all while obtaining better blood sugar readings.

Thank you for Reading

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

Well, if you are reading this, than congrats, I guess the Mayans weren’t right. But now that you are reading it, I want to take the time to say thank you.  I wanted to thank every person that has ever read this blog.  When I created this blog back in 2007, it started out as just a diary, somewhere I could write about how I felt that day with diabetes.  I didn’t even know anybody was reading it.  Since that initial blog, which was at a different URL, you, the readers have made a lot of things possible for me and I am extremely thankful for that.

I have been able to travel to conferences for free, be interviewed about diabetes, be invited to speak to local JDRF and ADA events, and sample a lot of products.  I wouldn’t be able to do that without all of you.  And lately, I feel that I haven’t held up to my end of things and haven’t been posting a lot lately.

There are a lot of other great diabetes blogs out there and I have seen some of them grow a lot bigger over the last year and I think that is awesome.  So most of you reading this probably read their’s also.  So thank you for reading their’s as well.  The more blogs that are read and created the more attention diabetes gets.

So, on this day that we were all supposed to go bye-bye, I would like to say thank you.

The Book of Better Review

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

I read the The Book of Better: Life with Diabetes Can’t Be Perfect. Make It Better* almost a whole year ago now. Maybe not that long ago, but it was definitely  a long time ago. I was sent a copy when it first came out and I read it right away, but never posted my review of the book. Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the ideas and concepts in this book lately, and not just in regards to diabetes, but in life in general, so I decided to finally write this damn thing.

In a very short summary, this book is about one concept. You may not ever be able to be perfect, but you can always do something just a little bit better. Let’s use an example from my life. I am trying to cut out fast food from my life. Well, I may give in to the urge every so often, but instead of getting 3 burgers, fries and a soda, I can do better by getting just 1 burger a side salad and a drink. It’s not the perfect choice, but it’s still better than the original option.

In the book, Chuck uses a common theme of learn from the idiot and the mistakes from the idiot. A lot of times, I find myself to be the idiot, and I don’t always learn my lesson from these mistakes that I make. Some times it takes me about 4-5 different times of commiting the same mistake before it finally hits me.

Chuck also talks about the fact that diabetes is not easy, but nothing worth doing is easy. So if you want to do diabetes right, and I’ll let you decide what “right” means, but, it’s not going to be easy. If it is easy, than there’s probably some improvements you can make. I take this same concept in my life in general too. Living off a budget and having financial peace is not easy, but it’s worth it.

Being a sports fan and an athlete my whole life from little league football to playing in college, I have always idolized coach Valvano. I always use the phrase, don’t give up, don’t ever give up. Chuck speaks about this in the book as well. You may have 5 consecutive blood sugars of over 300 after exercising, but don’t give up. Make a better improvement. Maybe next time, you’re at 260, then at 240, then next thing you know, you’re blood sugar is around 120 after exercising.

The way this book is written is great. There are a lot of great images that break up the reading and with the way my attention is when I read, it’s perfect. With different size fonts and colors, it grabs and keeps your attention. Great idea for a book. The book also includes a lot of real-life definitions of words. Not like the doctor speak or what you find in a medical diabetes book.

There is so much more to this book than what I have put in this review, so I strongly encourage you all to read it if you haven’t yet. Christmas will be here soon, so you may not be able to get it delivered before than, but it’s a great book with the New Year coming up. Don’t just think about the stuff in this book about your diabetes management, I use a lot of concepts from this book in my business management as well.

Enjoy.

*This link is an Amazon Affiliate link, meaning that I get paid a commission if you click on this link and purchase this book. I use these links because each person from Amazon that uses my affiliate link, I donate 3% to diabetes research or a diabetes charity of your choice.

**Disclosure – I was not paid to write this review. The review above is my own. These are my thoughts and opinions of the book.

What the $%^& Are You Doing?

Chris Stocker 4 Comments

What the BLEEP are you doing?  That’s a question that I asked myself yesterday.  This question came after a lunchtime twitter conversation that I had with Kelly and Courtney.  It first started off about PR companies and their lousy pitches to diabetics about losing weight and blah blah blah.  It then turned into a conversation about how I actually do need to lose weight and it brought up some of my horrible eating habits that I know that I have.

And then I asked myself that question.  How many times have I said that I was going to stop eating unhealthy. How many times have I said that I was going to exercise more. How many times have I said that I was going to blog more. Or do this more, and do that more and then I just don’t do it.  This isn’t just in my “diabetes world” but also in the other worlds I live in, like running my own business.  I have a to-do list of things I want to do to help grow my company about 10 pages long and none of them are getting done.  Why?  I know I’m short on time, but I know that I can better manage my time.

Which leads me to think about my time. The more of this unhealthiness that I put myself through the less time in the end I may even have.  What the $%^& are you doing Chris?!?

I think yesterday really lit a fire under my ass.  I’ve been reading a lot of productivity and time management books and blogs and listening to podcasts over the last few months to help me become a better business owner and person.  It has led to a lot of note-taking and to-do’s but not action.  It’s time for some action.

And isn’t it funny how one simple twitter conversation can make such a huge difference?

 

I’ve Gone Missing

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

Hey y’all it’s me! Do you remember me?  I know, you are probably shocked that you are seeing a post coming from in your feed reader or seeing a new #dblog post from me in Twitter.  If you have been reading this blog for the past five years, then you will know that I take these sort of breaks from time to time.  Writing this blog is not a job for me, but it’s something that I enjoy doing to help others who may be going through the same things that I have gone through.  Fortunately, I have a full-time job, which is owning and operating an online marketing company, which takes up about 15 hours a day.  There are certain periods of time when writing a blog post is the last thing on the list and it gets passed up on.

I have recently began a new work flow / project management system and have set aside a certain amount of time that is for writing only.  I am not allowed to do any “work” during this time, but just write.

With that being said, I hope that I will never have to write a post like this again.

I have a lot of blog reading to catch up on as well. So for those of you that are bloggers and you see 4-5 comments from me within a short amount of time, don’t worry, it’s not a robot, it’s me.

Do Not Use Dollar Store Batteries for Your Pump

Chris Stocker

About two months ago, I had a low battery alert pop up while I was at the dollar store, so I saw a pack of 10 AAA batteries at the dollar store and decided to just buy them and use them. Well these batteries last less than a week. So, my first recommendation is to just not use them unless it is an absolute dire need to use it.

So, the reason that I am bringing this up today is because last night, I had a little low battery scare. I knew that I had to buy new batteries because I only had a few dollar store ones left, but I thought I could make it until next Tuesday when I fly back to PA because my mom usually supplies me with like a years worth of batteries for my pump, so why go and spend $5 on batteries right now?

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Silhouetting for the First Time

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

As most of you know, I lost my insurance a couple of months ago and since then I have been scrambling trying to find the supplies that I need to get by until I’m able to properly budget for all the crazy costs that are occurring now.  During this time, I was able to try out the Silhouette infusion sets for the first time.  I have been pushing this off because, well, they kind of scared me because I knew they had a lot bigger of a needle.

I do not have the insertion device, so I knew that I had to go at it all by myself.  This was pretty terrifying, especially the first time.  It went in pretty easily, but then again, I’m not even sure that it went in all the way.  The whole 20-40 degree angle insertion thing was a little tricky.  It reminded me of the Medtronic CGM insertion device (which I dislike strongly as well).  Overall, there was no blood, no screaming, and nothing too crazy. Read More

Diabetes in New Orleans

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

This past weekend I was in New Orleans for a birthday trip to see my Philadelphia Eagles play the Saints on Monday Night Football.  Amanda and her family paid for the entire trip for my birthday gift because I mentioned that it would be a dream to go see the Birds on Monday Night.  This was my second trip to New Orleans.  I went a few years ago when the ADA Scientific Sessions were there and was there as a vendor and had a great time.  The food is amazing, but I ate a lot, so my sugar levels were all over the place.  Nothing changed on this trip. Read More

Diabetes Spotlight – Melissa Benesch Discusses the DOC

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

Happy Friday to everybody.  This is week two of the new Diabetes Spotlight series, where I will be hosting guest posts or interviews of those that are advocating for diabetes either offline, or even online via social media, but without a blog.  Give them more than 140 characters.

Today’s spotlight is on Melissa Benesch, which many of you will already know her from Twitter @MelllBe.

I asked Melissa the question, “What has the DOC done or meant to you, in your first year of having diabetes?”

Please enjoy. Read More