The First Post

I feel a bit strange launching into a blog without making some sort of formal first post. So here we are.

It took me a long time to come up with a title for this blog. I wanted something that somehow reflected both diabetes and visual impairment. I finally settled on this name, Shadows of Perfection, because (I admit it) I'm a perfectionist. I will reword a sentence multiple times until it sounds just right. But in everyday life I have to settle for less than perfect. No matter how hard I try, I will never have "perfect" health. No matter how hard I try I will also never have perfect blood sugar control, even though I do think I could do better than I currently am. And I get through every day with less-than-perfect vision which, even with all the magnifiers in the world is sometimes not enough. Yet I have to be comfortable with all of this living in the shadows of what some think of as perfection, or I would go crazy.

I'd like to use this blog as a place to write mostly about diabetes, but also about how visual impairment affects diabetes. Most people know next to nothing about visual impairment (how many of you reading this know what terms like "legally blind" mean?). Just as there are many misconceptions surrounding diabetes, there are many misconceptions surrounding visual impairment. In many ways diabetes and visual impairment are very different; they present very different challenges and require different coping strategies, but they are both things I must deal with every second of every day, in different ways. And there are some areas, such as product design and psychology, where they intersect in a major way.

So welcome to any readers who have stumbled upon this so far. I hope you find this blog as enjoyable and unique to read as all the others out there I've been lurking on (I suppose it's time I de-lurk myslf, eh?).