I loved it, when I was permitted to have it. My parents were responsible enough not to permit me to feed my soda monkey at will. I could not drink it at dinner, unless the meal was pizza; my mandated beverage at meal times was milk. I could get away with it in the evening, or with an afternoon snack. Gradually, as I came within sight of adulthood, I drank milk less and less, and Pepsi more and more. I went away to college, where no one was around to tell me what I should be drinking with dinner, or lunch, or in between meals.

I have easily drank 10,000 Pepsis in my life; the real number could be half again as high. I drank it out of cans, glass bottles and, when neither of those were available, plastic bottles, and could taste the difference in each container. I figured out just how much ice to put in a glass to chill the liquid without diluting it too much; if it got flat, I threw it away. If I were looking for a place to grab lunch and had no particular taste for anything, I would pick a franchise that served Pepsi over one that didn’t. I didn’t drink it at breakfast, but I drank it pretty much any other time, with every food short of chocolate cake.

And now, to quote Henry Hill, it’s all over. I have been diagnosed with seriously high blood sugar and a severe (and surely not coincidental) sensitivity to cane and corn sugar. I drank my last Pepsi this past Tuesday, May 8, at lunch.

It’s not that I ever had any illusions that Pepsi, or any soda, was good for me. One reason why I refused to drink soda that had gone flat was because I knew there was no sense in drinking something so unhealthy if you didn’t even enjoy how it tasted. I knew that the steadily growing spare tire around my midriff was at least partially the result of my Pepsi habit. I knew I was so dependent on the daily caffeine jolt that kicking it would be murder. And I rationalized that it wasn’t as though I were a man of many vices: I don’t smoke, I don’t drink coffee, I rarely drink alcohol; I don’t gamble or use hard drugs. So if my worst habit was drinking a lot of soda pop, was it such a big deal?

Turns out it kind of was. It turns out I had no idea how bad this stuff was making me feel until I stopped drinking it.

See, I thought it was normal to feel run down most of the time, and to hit that post-lunch period and want to lay your head down at your desk and sleep the afternoon away. Doesn’t everyone feel that way? Isn’t that why they sell those five-hour energy shots and all the other products designed to save us from our own fatigue? Maybe everyone does feel that way, but if they do, they don’t have to. Within a day of quitting Pepsi, I noticed something odd and wonderful: I no longer got tired. I no longer felt bloated with ounces and ounces of carbonation struggling to escape. I felt normal, give or take.

It hasn’t been all sunshine. About two or three days after quitting, the caffeine withdrawal symptoms hit. I drove home last Friday all but holding my eyelids apart to keep from dozing off on the road. I am, as I type this, trying to ignore a spiteful, stinging headache. I don’t drink coffee, but I know there are other ways to get caffeine if I want it. Screw it, though. As long as I’m starving the monkey, I might as well go all the way.

There’s much more I found out about myself from this allergy specialist, and possibly one day soon I’ll write an encomium for cheese, or popcorn, or some other food I’m newly forbidden to have. (In addition to cane sugar, dairy and corn are out as well.) But for now, I’m celebrating the slaying of my biggest vice. It’s been more than a week as I write this, and I have not been seriously tempted to backslide; in fact there’s most of a twelve-pack of Pepsi Throwback still sitting in my fridge, waiting to be donated to someone who wants it. If I drank it, all it would do is make me sick again. I might say I wish I had done this much sooner, but that’s the simplicity of hindsight. The truth is I’m just glad I’m finally doing it now.

Check out the piece here.

When I was growing up, 40 was the official over-the-hill birthday. A 40th birthday party involved novelty canes, ear trumpets, black armbands, walkers and other unfunny, made-to-be-thrown-away crap that occupied a dedicated shelf at Spencer’s Gifts. It still does, somewhat, but as I’ve aged I’ve noticed that culturally, we have tacitly agreed to move back the point beyond which “it’s all downhill from here.” As more Baby Boomers edge closer to the abyss, we have grown less willing to draw the line at which we must admit to ourselves that we are, finally, old.

I am a bit unsure of what to make of it all. Statistically, the odds are that my life is more than half over. When I think of all the things I would like to have done by this age – mostly involving writing and traveling, neither of which I’ve done to anything like the extent I once hoped – I am torn between two competing realizations: that youthful dreams rarely come true and mostly aren’t even meant to, and that I have squandered too much of the only existence I will ever have.

How badly should I feel that I have never lived abroad (well, apart from that semester in college), written a novel or been to Italy? That I work in the corporate world and have often substituted workplace ambition for personal or artistic goals? Is there any point in regretting the many mistakes I’ve made — situations where I sacrificed my happiness for someone else, gave into fear and laziness or knowingly made a bad decision to spare someone’s feelings?

I tell myself that any mistake is worth making as long as I learn from it. I tell myself that it is never too late to do the things that matter to me: to live in a place I don’t know, to use my talents for my own ambitions rather than for my bosses’, to live a life I will be grateful for once it’s over. I think these are valid views — but I would, wouldn’t I?

Shortly before he died, Christopher Hitchens said, “You have to choose your future regrets.” We can never fulfill all our dreams — not if our dreams are worth the name. I haven’t fulfilled all that many of mine. But I do have a beautiful, intelligent and fantastically talented woman to share my life with; reasonably good health; and that persistent, nagging urge to do something more than show up to a job every day — to make something lasting that reflects who I am.

Yes, I wish I had more time ahead of me. But do I wish I were younger? Not a chance. What wisdom I have has been very dearly bought. I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else than where I am today.

Happy birthday? Why, yes it is, thank you.

There is a complicated flood of emotions that arises in this moment. The first was blind fear: was the cat all right? (She was.) There is helplessness, a kind of grief, and in my case at least, a deep, sour rage. I couldn’t keep still, pacing relentlessly back and forth waiting for the police to arrive, and after them, the evidence technician. I prowled our rooms again and again, spotting what was missing, trying to notice everything that had changed. The DVD player was definitely gone. My wife’s laptop bag was rifled, the computer missing. The jewelry dish on the dresser was empty; what was in it again? Her sapphire engagement ring. Maybe her antique watch. Was that bag sitting on the bed when we left? Did I leave that drawer open? “What about your camera?” my wife asked. Checked the windowsill in the office where the camera bag was. Gone.

The initial shock wore off, after a night or two. Our broken door was replaced and fortified with a piercing battery-powered alarm. I called my insurance company and put the wheels in motion to have our stuff replaced, inasmuch as it can be. (If you rent and don’t have insurance, stop reading this and call your agent now.) What remains is the sense of violation — I try not to imagine the burglar actually walking through our apartment, sizing up our possessions for their pawn value, perhaps glancing at the cat regarding him quizzically from her carpeted perch — and the knowledge that we are not safe, at least not from anyone determined to do whatever necessary to steal from us and invade our lives. The worst injustice is not that our stuff was taken; it’s that someone can rob you of your sense of control over your own life, and that they can do it so easily and with so few consequences.

I suppose there is a chance that some of our items will be recovered. The police have told us, that our best bet for finding our things is to check the pawn shops ourselves, on the principle that we are best suited to recognize our possessions when we see them — and a tacit admission that, absent a really lucky break, there’s not much they can do. I am not holding out hope. The things are gone. We’ll get new ones. The sense of security and control is another matter. I’ve been burglarized once before, and I can attest that you do get over it; at any rate, you forget to be afraid. You could argue that we shouldn’t, that illusions of security are ultimately dangerous. But we all know that’s bunk. Living in fear is no life at all, and it’s easy to forget in a time like this that most people actually are decent. I think that setting my alarm when I leave the apartment is a sensible precaution. And I hope I won’t lapse back into the lassitude that had me believing that locking my door was my only responsibility in maintaining my safety. I won’t live in fear, but I really ought not to live in ignorance either.

This is Linus. I said goodbye to him for the last time today. My mother and I were with him and his last moments were peaceful and free of pain.

Anyway, wanted to poke my head up long enough to mention that the winners of the 13 Writing Prompts contest are now beginning to appear on McSweeneys.net. This contest was based on a piece I wrote for the site and I selected the winners.

Yes, I’m cheating on my own site. Go figure … If anyone finds their way here after reading the original piece or participating in the contest, welcome. I’m sure I’ll have more stuff for you to read soon.