Sunday, May 01, 2016

A-Z Blogging Challenge: the End

Well, I finished and that's an achievement in itself with what has been happening around here. For reasons I won't go into (but they relate to some serious health issues affecting someone dear to me, Virgo's baby deciding to arrive early and a very sick cat) the opportunity to do anything apart from basic survival has been very short around here and there were times when I thought I had bitten off a tad too much. This all coincided with my having enrolled in a course being run by Leicester University through FutureLearn that I really wanted to complete. This would have been simple enough if everything here hadn't imploded but it did. Still I persevered and while I didn't get to visit as many other bloggers as I would have liked I did get to see quite a few as well as managing to write the required 26 blog posts.

The beauty of a challenge like this is that it pushes you in different ways. First there's meeting the deadlines - and this year I was lucky enough to have scheduled around half before everything went pear shaped. Then there is finding blogs you would never have seen before and so extending your horizons. Among those I found most interesting this year were several book reviewers who will be getting regular visits from now on but there were plenty of others. There were history bloggers, those who wrote about their pets and a number who blogged about writing and publishing. Several put up tasters of their own writing while others blogged recipes or about family life and some went much further with genealogy and family history and that's only a tiny sample. One clever person developed a murder mystery with characters or plot points coming under each letter. I won't be able to get back to all of them every day but I will certainly be dropping by occasionally and, if it wasn't for this challenge, I wouldn't even have known they existed. I've learned so much and welcomed new readers to my blog, too. I hope that some at least will come back so I can continue to share my life with them.

2 comments:

Jo said...

I am so sorry things became so difficult for you Helen. I do hope things have sorted themselves out for you and your family.

Congratulations on finishing the Challenge with all the strikes against you.

Helen V. said...

Thanks, Jo. Things are still pretty fraught but fingers crossed it will settle soon.