A-Z Challenge 2021 - Reflections

Well so much for the challenge getting me back into blogging every day - this is only my 3rd post since completing the challenge.

Firstly I would like to say a big thank you to the team behind the challenge.  They all do a great job and this year they really tried to add variety into the challenge.  I'm afraid I didn't really "double down" by doing any of the additional suggestions/challenges apart from the "No E? No problem!" which was to write a blog post without using the letter E.  This one appealed to me so you can find my post here.

I am glad to say that I completed the challenge and only one of my posts was slightly late although I was almost burning the midnight oil on several days.  This is the 7th time I've done this challenge and every year I tell myself to be prepared i.e. have all my posts done and scheduled to post before 1st April.  I've never managed that yet but I did get some of this year's posts done in advance.  Some, not many.

Having a theme also helps and this year mine was Living in Lockdown.  It feels like we've been in lockdown forever here in London but things are easing now and I've had both my jabs so I'm feeling more relaxed about mixing, especially with people I know.

I won't be wearing a challenge T-shirt though, not even sure they ship to the UK but I'm not particularly public about my blog.  Of course it is in the public domain but I don't have it linked to Facebook or Instagram which I use.  I don't use Twitter or much else in the way of social media so I'm definitely not one for self promotion.  Hence my lack of participation in some of the challenges.

Lockdown has given us all many challenges but I think it's also stifled some of us.  Reading and blogging, two of my favourite things became difficult, almost a chore.  There definitely wasn't the same enjoyment there.  It was interesting to see that I wasn't alone in feeling like that and there were lots of explanations out there as to why this was. (Check out my U post for one of them.)

Despite having so much time on our hands I seemed to get less done.

Overall I'm happy with the way my challenge worked out and I'll definitely be back next year.

One thing I was disappointed with was not visiting many other blogs.  I definitely tried to respond to people who visited my blog but I was very bad at checking out new blogs by working through the master list.  But this is something I find myself saying every year.  I'm going to sign up for the Road Trip and set myself a daily target of blogs to visit to rectify this.  So apologies if I didn't get to visit you yet, but I'm on my way! 

For ease of reference all my A-Z posts can be found here.