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For the first time in a while, I woke this morning feeling rested. I realised that it had been some since I’d had a solid night’s sleep without getting up for anything. And it felt good!

I’ve always been someone who can fall asleep at the drop of a hat. Sitting in the passenger seat of a car for more than 20 minutes is all it takes for me to doze off (I’m really not a great driving companion). And I think that in all my travels I’ve been awake for take-off maybe twice. The second the plane starts taxiing, I’m asleep. Caffeine doesn’t affect me and I can sleep in bright light and through loud noise.

When I was diagnosed with diabetes, one of the most difficult things to deal with was the need to wake at a certain time (much earlier than I was used to) so I could have breakfast and take my first insulin shot for the day. I can still remember the relief I felt when I started using a pump and could go back to sleeping away half the day if so desired (as it often was).

I worried about how I would cope with the promised sleep deprivation that a baby would bring, but pure luck delivered us a baby who slept through the night from an early age and who, even now, sleeps in on weekends and over holidays and knows to leave the grown-ups alone if she rises first.

But lately, sleep hasn’t been coming easy.  Between the heat (and resulting hypos), getting used to sleeping in a new house and waking due to pain in my right eye following my second cataract surgery, I haven’t really had many nights of restful slumber. Plus, it doesn’t help that the allure of ‘just one more episode’ of Breaking Bad is reducing the number of hours spent in bed.

The nights disrupted by diabetes result in days disturbed by diabetes. I find myself yawning and finding excuses for more coffee to try to keep me alert. And I think about sleep – and then stress because I’m tired and not sleeping properly. I feel sluggish and slow and find it difficult to stay on task. And I spend most of the day banging on about how tired I am because I didn’t get enough sleep.

Which, apparently, is the problem.

I read today that just thinking about sleep positively can impact on performance. This study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology says that complaining about not getting enough sleep is the reason that performance suffers – not the actual lack of shut eye. There’s a placebo effect for you!

I’m not sure if that’s true, but given the number of nights diabetes does reduce the hours of sleep I get, perhaps some positive thinking is in order. Diabetes unfortunately means that there are nights of broken sleep. Maybe instead of complaining about it, I just accept it and think about the time I was actually dreaming and how good that was. Or look forward to the sleep that’s coming up.

Also, maybe a limit on the number of Breaking Bad episodes would help too. Just saying.

How are your New Year’s resolutions going? I read something the other day that most men who resolve to lose weight in the New Year have given away their diet by 2 January. Way to commit, guys!

The reason most of us fail when we make resolutions – at any time, not just New Year – is because we’re unrealistic about what we’re hoping to achieve. We grandly make claims that we will reinvent ourselves in ways that are simply destined to fail. We get disillusioned at the lack of progress or disappointed any time we fall by the wayside.  So, we give up.

Diabetes resolutions are no different. Promising to start being a ‘good diabetic’ (my eye is twitching right now!) and swearing to never have a BGL reading above 8mmol/l is noble in its vision, but downright impossible to attain. The first reading above 10mmol/l and the towel will be thrown. In.

Changes need to be small and goals achievable. Small rewards along the way acknowledging what we’ve accomplished help too.

My main diabetes goal for the start of the year is to get my basal rates sorted. I know that things aren’t great and haven’t been for some time. Despite having lost a significant amount of weight over twelve months ago, I haven’t done proper basal testing for a long time. I guesstimated some changes at the beginning of last year after some really nasty hypos and that kinda helped, but not so that I felt that things were really on the right track.  Despite knowing that reduced weight means reduced insulin requirements, I didn’t bother to work things out properly and faffed around by reducing bolus doses to compensate for too much basal insulin. Just ‘cause you know these things doesn’t necessarily mean you fix them. Apparently.

So, I’ll be starting with my morning basals and taking it from there. It’s frustrating and I really would prefer to be doing anything else, but I know that when my basal rates are tight, everything else diabetes-wise is that little bit easier.

Outside my diabetes life, I’ve decided that this year my goals include things that stretch me and push me out of my comfort zone. Last year, we visited Marrakech, which was so unlike anywhere we’d ever travelled previously. It was great. I loved it! I loved being in a country where each day I experienced something new and I was surprised around each corner. As much as I enjoy going to places where I know how things operate, it was so much fun working out a new place.

So with the desire of searching for something new to keep me busy – something that was a bit of a stretch – I found myself uttering the words ‘Yes, I think I would like a banjo ukulele’ while I was wandering around a music store in inner-Melbourne last week. It’s been years since I played any music, and rather than pick up my flute and start playing that again, I’m going to start something new. Why not?

The goal isn’t to be a virtuoso, it isn’t to play gigs. Hell, it isn’t even to be any good at it. The goal is to do something new and something fun.

New starts excite me. I love the possibilities of what lies ahead. The beginning of a new year has me filled with optimism. I don’t do resolutions, but I do like the ‘clean sheets’ feel of the start of January. And with a year behind me that was probably one of the most difficult I’ve ever had to endure, saying goodbye to 2013 has been more than welcome.

But as much as I love the new, the old makes me feel secure.

Old habits die hard, and for me that’s never more apparent than when it comes to diabetes. As much as I like to be up-to-date with the latest gadgets and know what’s at the cutting edge of research, I can still be relied upon to do many things the same; day in, day out. There is comfort in knowing that when checking my BGLs, my middle and ring fingers will always draw blood, so they are the two that I always use. There are minimal surprises when I insert a new cannula into the only fleshy part of my middle region – around the sides. Insulin delivers smoothly and evenly and after four or five days, I know that it’s time to change the line before my BGLs start to rise. Hypo treatments that work are the ones I rely on and mixing it up only reminds me why I’ve used The Natural Confectionary Company snakes for the last 10 years. Call it a rut if you want, but I prefer to look at it as ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.

It only becomes a problem when something I’m doing – and continuing to do – isn’t working and I don’t do anything about it. Not learning from mistakes is denial in its worst form. There have been times when I’ve known what I’m doing isn’t working and instead of dealing with it and making changes, I make excuses for it. ‘Oh, inserting cannulas into my leg isn’t providing as stable insulin delivery as usual, but it’s only because I’m sitting at my desk for work. When I start walking around more it will be fine.’ (Note to self: your job means sitting at your desk. You don’t like walking around. Stop putting the cannula in your leg!) Or ‘Yep – I’ve been hypoing constantly at 3am for a week now. But I don’t need to change my basal rates. Oh, no. I’ll just keep seeing if it fixes itself’. (Note to self: it won’t. Change your basal rates, you twit.)

Einstein said that the definition of insanity is ‘doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’. I say denial is often easier than trying to work out what’s going wrong and making changes.

So even though I say I don’t do resolutions, I am making one promise to myself for this year. Denial is out. If something isn’t working or if something is wrong, I’ll address it. Making the same mistakes over and over and over again doesn’t serve me well in any way. I’ve been too complacent in accepting things simply because I’ve felt I haven’t the energy to tackle them head on. But no more.

As I stood watching the fireworks explode over the city, signalling the start of two thousand and fourteen, I exhaled the year that just closed and said a quiet good bye. But better than that, I felt the strength in me that had built over the year. Because that’s the thing. Learning from the tough times means that hopefully the same mistakes won’t  be made again. I know that if faced with any trials and tribulations like the ones that came into my life last year, I won’t be dealing with them the same way. I’m ready for them.