A Picture of a Tired Man

I've been feeling a little beat up lately and yesterday I thought for a few minutes about how I could elevate that feeling. "Maybe I should stop blogging", I thought to myself. You see, there's this post that I put up a few months ago called, How To Spot a D-Parent and it's success vexes me. I like the post a lot, please don't misunderstand, but it's just a picture of me looking tired. That post has been seen so many times, thousands upon thousands of views and shares. So much in fact that periodically I'll notice that it has found life again on Facebook and it starts all over again. So this isn't complaining, I love that people enjoy the post and I am grateful beyond description that it is being shared and visited. But it's just a picture of me looking tired and it's confusing and just a scosh defeating to write something that I connect with very strongly and watch those words not catch the eye of readers. To pour yourself into a piece of writing and watch it sit, untouched, is a feeling that I could only describe in very artsy terms that I'd be embarrassed to share here - but in a word it 'sucks'. However, I understand that everything I share won't connect and I genuinely don't have a problem with that truth, well I didn't until a picture of me looking tired made writing on this blog seem like a waste of time. Why not just take a picture and write something vaguely amusing on it I've begun to wonder -  maybe www.ArdensMeme.com is available? 

Anyway, I've found difficult of late to write the way that I like to, not because it's possible that I'll post in on a slow social media day and fewer people will read it, not because some may not enjoy it or feel it the way that I do - it's difficult because, well, that damn picture just makes it all seem so (I'm thinking of too many adjectives to pick one). Back to the part where I was considering not blogging to make my life easier...

Last night I received an email from a person who reads this blog. They asked me a question about a device and ended the email with this line, "Thanks so much. Keep doing what you're doing! You are helping to inspire an entire generation of T1D's!" - and with that I was instantly pulled from my funk. One wonderful sentiment reached me from somewhere in the diabetes online community... at exactly the moment that I needed it.

Thank you so much A.G.! You may have saved my blog, which is so much more to me than a blog. You just saved me from internalizing so my fear, guilt, struggles and uncertainty. You saved the people that come here to find commonality - you may have even made me let go of the confusion I felt about a picture being more popular than anything that I've written in months. 

Thank you again, I'm going to answer your email and then finish a story that I started weeks ago and couldn't find the inspiration to finish.

My Best,