What's Up? What Are You Doing? Where AreYou????

'What's Up?'
'What Are You Doing?'
'Where Are You?'
'Can you do this?' (Right now!) 

These are some of the sorts of questions that seem to be popping up (in a very nagging tone) in my life ALOT lately and its had me step back from life and start to wonder what am I doing and am I heading where I want to? So I've taken two weeks leave from my usual job to help me do just that! Now into week two, I've learnt some interesting things, some I already knew, but have just been reminded of too!

1. Diabetes alone cam take up as much time, if not more, than a full time job.
2. Unless you are outspoken about your goals, its is very hard to achieve them.
3. There is absolute truth in the power of positive thought.




1. Diabetes is time consuming! There's the simple actions of 'doing' diabetes such as pricking fingers, injecting, and changing sites. Then there's going out to purchase supplies from medicine to food, then storing and managing the supply levels once your home. There's 'comminicating' diabetes, when somehow diabetes just suddenly becomes a topic of conversation, I often enjoy this bit but have still noted it takes up a fair bit of usually unexpected time. Or when a random BG pops up and you have to sit down or change plans - then communicate this to the others who've been effected. And of course, pulling apart of numbers and trends with our various medical professionals. Then there's the actual 'managing' diabetes, the biggest time factor of all. We manage every second of everyday. The measuring, calculating, working out 'why' a reading was up, down or even great (so you can repeat it again hopefully!). Staying up to date with research, technology and even social media and the our online peers. Pheeeew!

2. Goals need to be voiced. One of my goals for my two weeks of leave was to dim the white noise in my life, catch up on some sleep and find focus. Sounds achievable right? It is, but I made a mistake - I didn't actually tell anyone this is what I wanted to do. When you have a network of people and relationships in your life, especially that you interact with everyday, it is essential that communication is clear. I never told my workplace I didn't want to be contacted while on leave. In fact, I may have even said 'I'm here if you need me'. Despite knowing the pressures which caused me to require leave, I cannot blame them as I essentially gave them permission to contact me and made myself sound available. They have contacted me everyday. I don't feel like I've had a break from my workplace and essentially I began to feel resentment towards them. This brings me to my next lesson learnt:

3. Practise positive thinking everyday. I found a copy of The Secret on the coffee table a week ago. Something my partner reads from time to time but I just never got round to it. In my resentment over work, I looked at, challenged it, dared it, that if I picked it up and read it, could it make me feel better? You know what? It did! Combined with some other books and articles I've been reading lately, It reminded me that life can largely be about our approach, our perspective, and our reactions. It also reminded me that depression can be a very serious reality for many diabetics (further to this, I have a feeling that the women in my family are quite susceptible) When thinking about work, I realised that I had actually achieved two main outcomes: 1. I am on at least some level, indisposable. I realise I had been feeling lost in my job recently, this realisation has made me feel confident again. 2. Under pressure from the desire to be doing some thing else with my leave time, combined with working from home, I achieved alot more in a shorter amount of time. This has lead me to work out a new approach to my position which I will speak to my boss about when I return to work. More on positive thinking later.

On a holistic level, these are the three main observations of my time 'off'. Later I will continue to write about more observations and 'diabetic doings' of my everyday life, such as juicing, blood metre reviews and fitness.