I guess technically, I joined the diabetes online community back in October, 2005 when I joined dLife, and I became active in the overall DOC some time in 2008 -- but it wasn't until this year that I, and others, had the opportunity to "eyeball" the folk we'd been e-mailing, blogging to, commenting blog posts from, tweeting, and otherwise conversing with on various diabetes-related forums and social networks. 2009 is also the year dLife launched the dLife Community, and the year I started blogging here at Blogabetes.

Some of my year's highlights include:

March (READ MORE)

I'll admit I've never seen Buckaroo Banzai; however, the catch phrase "Wherever you go, there you are" has become as much a part of our popular culture as "Beam me up, Scotty" or "Time to make the donuts!" Yet, with about one in eleven US residents having -- or being at risk for developing -- diabetes, it's no wonder that almost every time we turn around, we meet (or learn about) somebody else "with the D".

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The Web Warren

I am personally involved, to one degree or another, in several online diabetes communities and social networks. Each has a different
set of features and a different communal attitude -- but what they all have in common is that they provide a level of psychological support for their members. In each, I find members who credit these communities for their continued quality of life.

Today, many of us work crazy hours, or we're single parents who can't drop off the children to head to a traditional support-group
meeting, or we're transportation-limited in some way or another. Online communities are in many ways the evolution of traditional support
groups into the digital space, providing support that transcends time zones and physical distance.

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"...every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main..."

While Donne's meditation has been somewhat trivialized by the parlor game, "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", the more people we meet, and the more experiences we have, the more connections to others we develop, and the more we become part of the "continent" of human life. Each group of people we encounter, and allow to enter our lives, gives us a different perspective from which to view the other groups and connections and degrees of connection of which we are part. We are woven further and more deeply into the network of human existence, and it, into us.

"...each man's joy is joy to me; each man's grief is my own..."

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With a new year come new ideas, new resolutions, new solutions to old problems, and of course new problems needing solutions.

Among the last is, once again, need for a full-time job. Cell phone sales were not high enough to keep me on until Christmas, so I am once again navigating the waters of unemployment and job-search.

For now, enough of that. The meme going around the Diabetes Online Community has been that of "spreading the word" -- both telling people with diabetes of the online resources available to us, and bringing our online activism out to the world in which we live, visit our doctors, purchase our food and medications, and educate our children. While most of us talk about outreach in terms of getting our real-life neighbors to hook up with our online resources, I see a different reality.

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George mentioned in a recent post that he no longer supports the American Diabetes Association (ADA) -- just the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) -- because as a Type 1, he feels the ADA does not have his best interests in mind. I'm not sure whether or not I agree with George's assessment, but the ADA has programs aimed at the improvement of life and quality of life for all people with diabetes (regardless of type), while the JDRF is focused exclusively on people with Type 1/autoimmune diabetes. In that light, charity dollars going to an organization such as the JDRF may have a more concentrated effect on George's life with diabetes.

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