Wednesday Hodgepodge? Nope let's A-Z recap instead!

Well Wednesday is usually Hodgepodge day but poor Joyce has been so busy travelling and socialising that we're skipping a week.  I don't know how she manages it most weeks with all that she has going on right now so a breather now and then is to be expected.

But of course it gave me the dilemma of what to write about.  Especially when my blogging seems to have dwindled a little bit lately.  Everything seems to have dwindled a bit so I need to get back on track.  I must admit I do like routines and they have been disrupted recently.  I'm still getting used to having hubby at home an extra 2 days a week.  The pattern of that was supposed to be set in stone, Mondays and Tuesdays, giving us extra long weekends but many weeks the pattern has been upset.  For example this week he has been away in Lincoln for a regular team building/meeting/training get together from Monday until today.  That means he will be home tomorrow and Friday and won't go back to work until next Wednesday.  I guess I will just have to learn to go with the flow!

Regular blogging made me think about the A-Z challenge.  (Posting every day during the month of April except Sundays.) I really enjoyed that this year and have already started to think about themes for next year but in the meantime I signed up for the Road Trip.



One of the things you're supposed to do while taking part in the A-Z challenge is visit other participants.  Strangely, even though I was more prepared this year, at least for the first half of the challenge, I probably did less visiting than last year.  It does get a bit manic, especially when you get lots of comments and need to respond, as well as just getting your own posts finished and posted. And once again there were a lot of people taking part.  (1344 at the end which would have been more at the start of the challenge as people who didn't keep up with the challenge would have been kicked out.)

But next comes the Road Trip.  This is when you can take a more leisurely stroll through the blogs without the pressure of the challenge.  It's a separate sign up list which is much shorter than the challenge list.  At the moment the Road Trip list only has 67 participants signed up and the list closes in a couple of days.  I'm in at no 46.  So my plan will be to visit those other 66 before the next challenge starts and blog about them here.

Last year 172 signed up for the trip and I had a schedule planned for visiting them all.  I managed to get to 63 of them (36%)  I think my report card would say "could must do better".  Some of the blogs are really interesting and I am following some.

Many of them are really good blogs but just not to my taste.  There are a lot of writers out there, many who use the challenge to serialise their writing.  I applaud anyone who is able to take their writing to that level but during the challenge I found it hard to keep up with ongoing stories.  So I just didn't.  Short snappy blogs were much more likely to hold my interest. Disappointingly some people who had signed up for the Road Trip hadn't posted since finishing the original challenge.  Not one single post!  Other blogs were signed up on the Road Trip even though they hadn't taken part in the challenge.  

If the sign up list doesn't get too much longer my aim will be to try and get to them all this year.  I'll keep you posted on my travels.