I second 1234usmc's opinion that low carb makes it far easier to manage type 2 than the ada recommended diet. I'd also highly recommend "Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution: The Complete Guide to Achieving Normal Blood Sugars" https://www.amazon.com/Dr-Bernsteins-Diabetes-Solution-Achieving/dp/0316182699 for anyone new to being diabetic... really helps you get a handle on the whole thing and gets you on good footing to get started. You can do it man, there's great resources out there for managing diabetes and a lot of really helpful people on this board and on reddit as well if you need support.

If you've got the money for strips, testing early on more frequently to see the patterns your body has really helps... first couple weeks I wasted a lot of money testing... fasting, pre-meals, 1h, 2h, 3h post-meal, before bed, but I really feel like it helped me understand what was occurring in my body, how it was reacting to specific foods, etc. Well worth the "price of admission." The big ones as testing goes are "fasting" which is the first test in the AM after you've been asleep, and 2h pp which is two hours since the end of your meal (although 2hpp can be a bit misleading, some people peak early or late, it's useful to test a few different pp times to get the right one.)

Also be aware that if you see a big spike in your am blood glucose reading over what it was when you went to bed, you might have what is called the sunrise effect/dawn phenomenon and you can rectify that by eating something with some fat and protein before bed usually (really helped stabilize my morning blood sugars a lot.) If you're also hypoglycemic there's also the chronic Somogyi rebound as well, but that tends to be a bit more serious than DP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_phenomenon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_Somogyi_rebound