A to Z Reflections

Some time last March, I accidentally found out about the A-Z challenge, which challenged bloggers to post the letter of the alphabet every day during the month of April, with Sundays off for good behavior.  When I saw that, I thought:

As my favorite Barney Stinson of HIMYM would say

It’s all I can think of these days! I have a full time job that gets me home at past 9pm on most nights, yet when I get home, no matter how tired I am, I open my laptop to eke out words and find the accompanying pictures to go with them and find myself going to sleep at around 2 AM. And when I’m not in front of my laptop, I’m thinking.. hmmm… what words start with the letter – ? and composing blogs in my head. I’ve stopped stalking my friends on social networks, preferring to stalk my fellow A-Z challengers on Feedly RSS reader instead.

There were even a couple of instances that I left the office at midnight already. When my friends found out about it, they said, “What? How could you have found time to blog after going home that late?” My friend Mildred, who always tells me that she is my #1 fan, explained for me, saying, “But it’s her passion. You always find time for your passion.” She is so right.

The funny thing is that sometime last year, I had thought about blogging every day and failed after the first week. But I managed to do it this year in April, thanks to the challenge which covered 26 days. On Sundays I wrote my normal blogs. Why this year I have written almost as many posts for the first third of the year that I wrote for the whole of last year. And some of these posts are some of the best I have every written, actually. I floundered from A to E, but by F, I had found my footing in thought-provoking posts.

What was a surprise for me is the blogger networks I formed during this challenge. I discovered new blogs that I really enjoyed reading, and other bloggers also found me, liked what I had to say, and actually told me so in the comments. I have had a few comments here and there over the years, but never so much as at least 10 comments in a single post. For the first time since I started blogging, I felt valued, the feeling that Vincent van Gogh needed to feel as I said on my most commented on post in the challenge, V is for Valuing Vincent. Thanks guys, now I won’t cut off my ear or shoot myself in the chest in the middle of the wheat fields (not that I can find any here in Singapore). You’ve saved me! 😀

Now that I knew what that felt like, I started to make it a point to make comments on blogs I read too. In the past I never make comments on blogs I read, but now I do, not only on fellow challengers’ blogs, but even on other blogs that I’ve always stalked read in the past.

So overall, this challenge has been – err – challenging and exhausting and I was glad when it was over so I could get more hours of sleep (LOL), but I really had joy in the journey. Would I do it again? Yes. But maybe next time I’ll pre-schedule all my posts as early as January (oh, who am I kidding? I’ve always been a crammer) and follow the K.I.S.S. rule – Keep It Short and Sweet (which I didn’t follow this round, oops).

So I would like to thank the organizers of this challenge, I’m sure it was a lot harder for them to write posts and do their other duties at the same time. Much appreciated! You can find the A-Z challenge blog here. You can find the list of the almost 2000 bloggers who joined the challenge this year over here. Check out their blogs!

I would also like to thank everyone who read my blogs and made comments and if I wasn’t able to return the favor, my sincerest apologies, on some days I barely had time to write my own blogs, much less read others. :-/

I will end this with the complete list of my challenge entries for those who want to take a look. I have placed asterisks on the posts that I consider to be my best posts. If you were following me during the challenge, which post was your favorite? Please share in the comments.

A – April Alliterations are Awesome
B – Blog Bots
C – Celebrity Crush Confessions
D – Dee Decides to Diet
E – Exaggerated Elevator Edginess
F – Favored Freedom
G – Generations and Gratitude
H – Handling Humiliation with Humor
I – Instant Instants
J – Joy in the Journey
K – Keepsakes and Knick Knacks
L – Love Letter for Lok-Lok
M – Memorable Makati
N – Nasty News
O – Overwhelming Obsession
P – Peer Pressure
Q – Queen of Quotable Quotes
R – Retailing Relationships
S – Sights in Singapore
T- Tribute to Trish
U – Undeniably Undead
V – Valuing Vincent
W – Worst Weakness
X – XXX
Y – Young Yesterday
Z – Zitella in Zamboanga