I've had diabetes since I was 7, now I'm 24, that's 17 years - over 70% of my life.
I developed my diabetes management 'skills' as a result of the need to find something that worked better than the take these insulins in the morning, dinner and night; eat this and hope for the best.  As a result, I developed problem solving skills that helped me somewhat manage my health, but I was a child/teen - so while they seemed to be working for me, they were being much more refined by doctors and nurses who were focused on pumping.  These refinements never made it to me, until the last few years when I started researching on the Internet.

I only started carb-counting a few years ago, and it's been a struggle for me to put away old assumptions - for the majority of my life, I used past experiences and guesses to dose for food.  I thought it was quite accurate as my sugars were 'decent'.

Long story short, I've learnt a lot lately.  The major finding I've had is that I've been terrible to my body.  I have no idea how much glucose my body has produced while I was having unknown lows.  From what I can tell, aside from this year, I've probably had overnight lows and rebounds every night for the past decade.

Last time I remember calculating a total daily dose, I was averaging 20 units of insulin for dinner, and 16 for lunch.  As I've been refining my dosing and carb-counting, I've been cutting back more and more and more on how much insulin I'm taking, always being shocked at how it is still efficiently taking care of my sugars.  Now, knowing what I know - I can eat the same meals and my doses would be 14 and 10 respectively.
  While I always thought I was odd and needed much more short acting insulin, I'm now realizing that I'm much closer to that 50/50 balance than I thought I was.
It scares me to think that all those years, when I would test 3 hours or more after a meal, I would be correcting-not for poor dosing, but for the sugar that my body was kicking out in order to avoid a major low.

I think the biggest and most helpful realization that I've had is that testing 2 hours after insulin can reliably gauge where my sugars are heading.  It sounds so simple, but please remember that my diabetes education originated from test in the morning, at 4pm and before bed - hoping that those numbers were accurate indicators of a fasting blood sugar.

I have no regrets.  While I wish I and the world had better information about how to manage diabetes while I was growing up, I am glad that I have found a way to find and adapt this knowledge into my life.

Anyway, thanks to those that read this.  I'd love to hear from other long-time diabetics about how they transitioned from archaic treatment regiments into the modern world of diabetes management.