As Carrie Bradshaw would say…”and just like that”, another National Diabetes Awareness Month (NDAM) has come and gone.

And yes, I learned a couple of lessons in the past 30 days.

For starters, I learned that my mindset going into NDAM was identical to my mindset at the end of it: Pace yourself. Life with diabetes is a marathon, not a sprint, and it deserves to be treated as such.

I also learned that it’s a whole lot easier to drown out the deafening noise of NDAM online when I choose to be mindful about how much content I consume during the month of November. I kept my focus on everything that pertained to my work at the time, and I decided to remove my personal feelings about social media and NDAM from the equation. That made it so much easier to keep my attention on the specific initiatives I was hoping to accomplish during the month, and I was able to make sure that work stayed separate from anything I shared on my blog.

And finally, this particular NDAM reminded me that you get out of it what you put into it. I could’ve put my heart and soul into diabetes advocacy last month and I’m sure I would’ve gained so much from that experience, but since I had enough self-awareness to realize I just didn’t have the same number of spoons to give this year as I have in years past, I made the conscious decision to cut back. I don’t regret it for a second, especially considering that this extra attention could be placed on my actual lived experience with diabetes and taking extra steps to improve my management. That manifested itself into one of the best endocrinology appointments I’ve had in recent years, and truly, what more could I want out of NDAM? After all, I can’t be the kind of advocate that I’d like to be if I’m not taking proper care of myself…so if the only outcome I have from this NDAM is that I’m finally feeling confident in myself and my use of my diabetes devices, then I have absolutely no regrets about that whatsoever.