Showing posts with label diabetes mentor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diabetes mentor. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 4, 2023

Diabetes Is Work

The word Work is written in a large green font, the letter O is replaced by a clock

I don't know how many jobs we're supposed to have on average in our lifetime, I'm sure there is a study or some incredibly scientific research somewhere or maybe you already know? Let me know in the comments at the bottom of the blog if you do. Work? But, this is a diabetes blog! That's true, diabetes and ranting - often the two go hand in hand. However, my time spent in diabetes advocacy, supporting others, tapping out blog posts like this one, creating videos, talking to media... you get the idea, has steadily increased in the last three or four years. Something, unfortunately, has to give.

You may know that I've spent the last decade or so as a self employed worker. The benefits of that type of working life are many; working when I choose, always being employee of the month, etc but there are many cons to that too; no holiday pay, no sickness pay, working 100 hours a week, working 2 hours a week, etc - let's just say that it's not a stable way to earn a living, a little like playing a violin on the Titanic. Everything is lovely for periods and everything is not lovely for other periods and sometimes you're going to drown. 

What do I do? - I get asked this at nearly every diabetes conference or meet up! I make people feel beautiful. I sell cosmetics, at least, I used to. Now, not so much.

A quick look at what that job entails. I buy stock from wholesalers and flog it on the Internet. It's gone reasonably well although, I had no intention of doing the job for so long and I've backed away from that in the last three or four years. See paragraph one as to why that might be.

Not only has diabetes "stuff" begun to fill up more and more of my time and much as I hate to admit it, I've aged. 46 revolutions around the sun at the last count. I've also developed osteoarthritis in a shoulder which makes the lifting of heavy boxes a bigger struggle than ever before. Clearly, this vocation is no longer for me on a full time basis and I need to do something less physically demanding. 

From 2005 to 2010, I worked in the poker industry as well as playing the game to a pretty high level. My work in that industry taught me a lot about online marketing, socials and optimising for the almighty Google. I suspect that my blog does better than it might for that knowledge. So, is SEO the next step? While that's a perfectly fine form of work, it is rather like accounting; incredibly dull (I was once an assistant accountant, too). Work, at my age, needs to be a fulfilling thing as well as put food on the table. 

And back we go to diabetes advocacy. I love the diabetes community almost without exception. I've gained so much from my peers and friends that I doubt I could ever repay them. I do try, though and rarely does a day or two go by without somebody reaching out to me for some guidance. Sometimes the reaching out has been aggressive or tainted with accusations - still, I tried to help as best as I could as I try to see the good in everybody and I suspect frustrations can rise to the surface very easily when it involves our health. When it goes right, when a person gets the support which improves their life with diabetes, the satisfaction is enormous. I really can't compare it to anything else. There are a few examples of that, from late night messages about a dosage error to getting several people approved for an insulin pump and everything in between. It doesn't feel like work because I feel like I'm helping friends and I'll continue to do that for as long as I'm able. What it is, is time - You're understanding the image used for this post now, right?

Time is finite. There are 24 hours in a day, remove sleep time, eating, personal care, the demands of friends and family and you're left with a much lower number of hours in a day to work. That, of course, goes before such frivolous things such as going out and having fun. Time is very valuable and that's why we work for reward in the form of money. Perhaps if you work for the NHS, you work for very little money. We need that to buy our food, pay for the home we live in, pay for the energy to keep us warm and to help us go back to work again at the soonest opportunity to earn more money to do all the same things again. Wow! Now that I've written that, life is one endless depressing cycle of working and earning isn't it? Anyway! Most of us need to work to earn the money we need to live. 

I'm not changing anything that I do right now. If we have conversations then we always will, if I mentor you for free then that will continue, my socials and blog and vlogs and all that jazz will always be for free. What will happen is that I'll offer additional things and ask for a small amount of money for my time. You'll find details about such things at the bottom of this blog (The Blog Member link) and that's it. It'll start from £3 as an appreciation, a tip if you will, up to bigger sums for greater time-demanding support.

 I'm hopeful that means I can carry on doing the good things, the social posts, the talks, the articles and charity fundraising & volunteering while time dedicated to direct support and mentorship will no longer impact on my day to day income. Perhaps it'll mean that I can finally stop selling 20kgs of lipstick?! and concentrate my time on helping people to feel better rather than look great.  



 

Friday, March 11, 2022

Diabetes Mentor

 


I mentioned Diabetes Mentoring on Twitter, two days ago. I had no real intentions of discussing it let alone to write a blog post about it but here we are. I wrote about it in passing as I tweeted what was an unusually busy few days of Diabetes related things involving focus groups, podcasts and commercial interests. Then, yesterday, I took a video call from somebody I am mentoring and, as is my want, I tweeted what was a positive experience for me. Again, no real intentions to discuss just an outlet for some positiveness which can be rare for people managing Diabetes. The response has been very encouraging!

Most of my tweets get a few likes and a few comments and that's cool. The mentoring tweet appeared to get more than average engagement, with a couple reaching out to me in direct messages to ask how they can help. Amazing! So, let's get into how this began and where it might go...

...I try to be an open sort of fella on social media. If you tweet me then I'll try to at least acknowledge it or reply to you. If you direct message me then I'll nearly always reply. Why not? social media is about engagement, for me and if you talk to everyone then you can form better, rounded, views of your preferred subjects, for me, mostly Diabetes and mostly T1D. Because of my openness, I've been approached for help and guidance on many Diabetes related issues and I'm very happy to try to help or signpost to someone else who could. Recently, I suggested to one person that it might be better to talk about their issues via a phone call or a video call. That conversation moved to the suggestion of a more frequent "catch up" with each other and so began a mentorship which has progressed well to date. 

Of course, I am only one person and there are some who might welcome a mentor but not me! I get it, I won't take offence at that, so where can that be addressed? It seems apparent that such a thing is needed and if I take into account the interest expressed in helping by others then there is no shortage of potential mentors. 

Safety must be a high priority in such ventures. In my 5 years of Diabetes online engagement, I've seen evidence of horrendous things done and said by individuals who were seen as role models, respected advocates and to this day still hold positions of power and influence within Diabetes organisations. Scary, huh? So, it's vital to never put a single person at risk of exposure to individuals who have nefarious motives. 

Some discussions have taken place within the #GBDoc community already. However, that community (in which I'm very active)  has seen some big changes in the last year and things are still in the process of settling down. A new and potentially large step in the direction of peer supporting will likely take some time and a lot of energy. Still, that would seem the best avenue to direct individuals needing one on one support and potential mentors, while offering a safe environment for all concerned. 

Potential helpers/mentors, I have noted your names and I will keep you up to speed on developments. Please be patient and remember that we're all volunteers within #GBDoc. If you're interested in helping then please let me know.

Do you need support? Then do feel free to send me a direct message on Twitter or you can email me - daddiabetic@gmail.com I can't offer support to everybody but I will try to direct you to someone who can help you if I can't. Obviously, I don't offer medical advice or counselling - If you do need those things then I will direct you to the right places.

That's it for today. A short blog that was too long for a tweet and I hope it sheds some light on that particular subject. Fire any questions at me should you have any. Mentoring is a feel good thing to do. Do you know what else is a feel good thing to do? Helping those who are literally fighting for their lives in war zones such as Ukraine...

...As you might have seen, a conflict has broken out in Ukraine as Russia has invaded that country. The scenes on TV and on social media are horrifying. What can we do? Well, I don't think there is a wrong way to help if you donate to charities who are active in helping the people of Ukraine. I support many charities but one which has always had my heart is MSF. Medecins Sans Frontieres translates as Doctors Without Borders. When it comes to the health of others in disaster areas, war zones and the like then I think we all have a duty to do what we can to help and help those who directly help! such as MSF. With that in mind, all donations to me via Buy Me a Coffee and all the pennies generated through the ads dotted around my pages will be donated to MSF. I will make up the difference for the fees taken by PayPal and Buy Me a Coffee. That will run until further notice, no time frames and possibly until Ukraine is a free country again. Thank you for reading my blog. 

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