A Mish Mash of Feels

I have been absent from posting for quite a while.  I have every intention of writing and posting something and then life happens.  This post has been floating through my head for weeks.  I've had a rough go of it mentally for a good stretch now, I know I am sounding like a broken record because it seems like almost every post has that sentiment lately.  I've been unable to make any DSMA chats recently due to a change in my work schedule, and the only one I have attended in the past 2 months I actually left early because I wasn't feeling up to talking T1D that day.  I do usually browse through a lot of the questions and answers though.  A little while back there was some talk around losing the feel of community that led to another #Dblogcheck day.  Which I had every intention of participating in but...well, see above.  That has had me thinking about why I started my blog and where I am with that today.  Like so many others I started blogging when I came across Six Until Me, which led me to several others.  I didn't really find the DOC until later and then I started getting active on Twitter, which I had never done before.  So, I decided to start up my blog as an outlet for the things I was feeling but didn't really talk about.  The Pretty Lady in My Life can definitely tell you how hard it is to actually get me to talk about what is going on in my head.  Starting out I really liked the anonymity of it.  Only one person in my real life knew about the blog.  Even when I attended a retreat full of Adult T1s I didn't tell anyone about my blog.  When I found the DOC and started making connections it was good to see other people out there who "get it".  Getting a comment on a blog post, few as they may be, made that feeling even better.  I started to be OK with people knowing about the blog and reading some of my more personal thoughts.  After the retreat a couple of the organizers let me know they had found it and that they really liked it.  As I got more connected with the DOC and saw that I wasn't the only one who struggled with emotional side of the disease.  I had warmed up to the idea of sharing my own struggles, even though people who know me might see them.  But, eventually it became a place where I was sharing things with the online world that I wasn't sharing with people close to me, and that is a problem.  I have found myself feeling pretty vulnerable and longing for some of the anonymity back.  Questioning if I should continue blogging.  All the people in the DOC are so great and have made a huge difference for the way I handle my life with T1D.  There is no question that when I take part in DSMA and DCDE that I feel better about my diabetes and I take better care of it.  However nothing takes the place of a real live person, someone you can call or text when the going gets rough.  A person you can grab a quick bite or drink with and know that they get how frustrating it is to decide exactly what you're going to eat or drink beforehand and if you change your mind you have to bolus again.  It's small thing but one of the things that bugs me the most.  I know a few people in my local area with Type 1 diabetes, a couple even close to my age, but none that I feel close enough to or that I have enough in common besides the big D to really have a friendship with.  I do not have an easy time meeting or getting close to new people as it is.  I'm pretty introverted and tend to fail when it comes to keeping in touch regularly.  That makes maintaining friendships difficult.  So being able to find someone with T1D, that I feel could be a friend, making the effort to actually form that friendship, and maintain seems like a daunting task.  So I wonder if taking some time away from the internet and forcing myself to find and cultivate that kind of friendship might be a good idea.  Or will it just leave me not interacting with any T1 peers at all?  And where does blogging fit into it all?  I am struggling with feeling like what I post really matters, and I hate myself for thinking that it needs to, because ultimately I started this blog for the purpose of helping to deal with my own feelings about living with Type 1.  I guess I need to get back to that.  No worries about page views (not that I've ever worried too much about that), comments, frequency of posts, or how my posts effect or make sense to anyone else.  I need to write for my sake and if it happens to help someone else out along their journey, well then I guess that's just a bonus.