In every different category of our lives there’s a different way to judge whether or not someone has achieved greatness. In academics they use the G.P.A. In business, they might look at profits or client acquisition. In theatre they might look at the number of tickets sold or the reviews in the paper. A chef might look at the words of a food critic or whether or not a customer licked their plate clean. And in diabetes, they use an obscure-sounding blood test called the Hemoglobin A1c. Please read on at my blog, The Juice Box Diaries.
My "goal", which is sort of vague, isn't really to "be" my best but to "work to improve." Sometimes it's BG and sometimes it's stuff like "figure out what time to eat so I don't have to go to the bathroom in the middle of a long run." While BG success rocks, I would trade it for a porta-potty free run any day! I agree with you about publicizing our A1C but I don't feel all that groovy about it because it's "there".
The people I really respect are people whose A1C isn't where they want it who say "I want to change, how do I do it?" There aren't that many of them but, every now and then, somebody comes out of the woodwork and says "Hey, I posted this a few months ago and used to be 11.2 and now I'm 9.1" and I try to applaud them as much as I can from here as that seems like a tremendous accomplishment to me.
Success to me would be growing old without complications.
This is a really hard question. I focus on trying to achieve "good numbers" because I'm so afraid of the alternative- not because I want to attain success at diabetes management. I guess right now my idea of success would be to be able to appreciate the things I'm doing that are good for my body. It's hard to allow myself to do that. Before my dx, I ate lots of sugar and fast-acting carbs in general, I tolerated high levels of stress, always put other people first, and I didn't exercise. I've made a lot of improvements in those areas, but I struggle with being able to feel proud of the changes I've made since dx.