Message Monday – #DBlogWeek Day 1

I’d say this diabetes blog is still just a baby, but I thought I’d try to get a jumpstart by participating in Diabetes Blog Week. If you haven’t seen it before (though I suspect if you’ve found me, you found me through this), Karen at Bittersweet Diabetes chooses topics for the week, and diabetes bloggers across the Internet tackle the same topics on the same day. Today’s prompt is “Message Monday.”

Lets kick off the week by talking about why we are here, in the diabetes blog space. What is the most important diabetes awareness message to you? Why is that message important for you, and what are you trying to accomplish by sharing it on your blog? (Thank you, Heather Gabel, for this topic suggestion.)

So since I’m new to diabetes blog world, I don’t think I know the answer to this question. There are a couple of reasons I decided to start blogging. Mostly, blogs have been incredibly helpful to me in the two years since I was diagnosed. I don’t have any diabetes friends, so the blog world is the only thing that can give me a window into someone else’s experience. And the only place I can go for advice for my peers.

That’s why I read blogs, but I started writing partly because I felt like I needed to be writing more. Since I think about diabetes roughly every 5 minutes every day, it seemed like a natural subject matter choice. I studied English in undergrad and graduate school, and I work in the media now. But I don’t do nearly as much writing as I used to, and I want to do more. There’s no better way to feel inspired to write than to do more writing.

So I think what I want from this blog is a place to tell my story mostly for myself. I hope it’s helpful to someone else and it makes diabetes seem a little more normal and the burden feel a little less concentrated on just you. But mostly I’m planning to write for me, to give me a place to work through the crazy emotions that come with something that takes this much work. And I hope I find some T1D friends! Even if I can’t see y’all in person, to have some people who get it in a first-hand kind of way seems pretty freaking amazing.