This Is How I Learned to Show Up Every Day

How Daily Struggles With Diabetes Shaped My Consistency

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I still remember the first finger prick.
Red device. Test strip. A tiny drop of blood.
Then the number: 543.
I didn’t know then what that meant. Healthy blood sugar should hover somewhere between 70 and 140.
Mine wasn’t even close.

The moment felt surreal. My hands were shaking. I could hear my own heartbeat in the quiet of the kitchen. My parents were calm, but I could see the tension behind their eyes. It was a number, but to me, it was a warning. A signal that nothing about my body would ever be the same. And in that moment a new me was born.

Nine years later, I’m still following the same routine.
Wake up. Check blood sugar.
Eat breakfast. Take a shot.
Two hours later, check again. Snack if needed.
Repeat for lunch. Repeat for dinner.
Pre-bed shot. Long-acting.
Four shots a day. Every day.

There are no weekends off. No holidays.
No “skip a day and catch up later.”
Diabetes doesn’t care about your life circumstances , your mood, or your fatigue.
It’s a full-time companion that never leaves your side.

Most people don’t see the calculation happening behind the scenes.
The quiet, endless questions that never stop:

What if I go low while I’m out?
What if I forget my insulin?
What if I don’t feel the symptoms until it’s too late?

Even sleep comes with its own risks. Will I wake up in time? Will I have the right amount of insulin in my system? Do I have something handy to raise it if it goes low?

Over time, you develop a routine.

You get good at managing the unpredictability.
But that doesn’t mean it becomes predictable. Every day brings new surprises. A meal that worked yesterday might spike your blood sugar today. A walk might drop it unexpectedly.

Diabetes humbles you constantly. Just when you think you’ve got a grasp on it, it laughs in your face.
It doesn’t care about you.

and if you aren’t careful that is a fast track to diabetic burnout.

But it’s not all hopeless.

And looking back I am grateful for the things it has taught me because I have found them useful in other areas of my life.

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One area where diabetic lessons have helped, has been on SubStack.

When I started writing on Substack, it felt oddly familiar.

Managing diabetes and building a creative life both demand the same thing:
consistency in uncertainty.

You can do everything right and wake up to numbers that make no sense.
The same goes for writing. Some days, the words flow. Other days, you pour your energy into a post that falls flat. Metrics don’t move. Feedback is silent. Effort feels invisible.

That’s when the real test begins.

You either correct and move on, or you give up.

Burnout is a kind of low.
It creeps in quietly.
One ignored post becomes two, then three.
You start to wonder: would anyone notice if you just stopped?

Diabetes doesn’t allow you that luxury.
You don’t get to quit because you’re tired.
You don’t get to take a break because it’s inconvenient.
You get up. You check the numbers. You try again.
Every day. Every hour. Every single shot and check is a choice, a decision to keep going.

And that same routine has carried me through my slow season on Substack.
The discipline that keeps me alive keeps me creating.
It’s not glamorous. It’s not easy.
But persistence rarely is.

I’ve learned that showing up is its own victory. That quiet, incremental effort compounds. That momentum matters more than inspiration.
Diabetes has taught me how to live inside uncertainty.
Substack has taught me how to make meaning from it.

Persistence isn’t the absence of chaos.
It’s showing up anyway.
When the numbers don’t make sense.
When the results aren’t immediate.
When exhaustion whispers that it would be easier to quit.

that’s endurance at it’s finest.
The tiny, daily acts that keep you moving forward, even when the path is unclear.
The practice of paying attention, correcting mistakes, and trusting the process.
It’s the same whether you’re managing blood sugar or building a creative life.

And somewhere in that repetition, that daily grind, you find a quiet kind of strength that’s not flashy or dramatic, but real.

Reliable. Persistent. Human.

What keeps you showing up, even when the numbers don’t make sense?