That time of year again. Preparing for the A-Z Challenge

Yes I know I've just finished the Just Jot it January challenge but now it's time to start thinking ahead for the A-Z Challenge.

For all things about the challenge click here.  The organisers do a fantastic job with this challenge which has been running since 2010!

I've only been participating since 2015 but it definitely presents more than just posting something every day of the month of April to me.  I've mostly gone for a themed approach which have been as follows:

2015  Family & Relationships - I have a large family to draw on and this didn't require much in the way of research.

2016  London Underground Stations - this set me the real challenge of getting out and about, taking photos etc.  It really pushed me to overcome the anxiety that plagues me, particularly when using public transport.  I didn't visit all the stations I wrote about but I did get to most of them so this was a good year for me.

2017  Random words - this was a much looser theme but reduced the stress levels of trying to visit places, take photos and get blog entries composed and posted on time.  I felt I'd been a bit too ambitious in 2016 and this theme allowed me to do what I do best - waffle!

2018  Sports - this was prompted by watching the Winter Olympics and I tried to find more obscure sports to write about so again a theme but manageable.

2019  No theme (Conversations in my head.)  Of course there was a theme really.  This was the year I decided I wanted to actually do posts that were more of a "writing" nature.  Many of the A-Z participants are writers, including published ones.  I felt that many of my posts were much more frivolous, didn't have the continuity of a story and were often short just so that I could get them posted in time.

The posts were still quite random and not continuous but had the underlying theme of Alice from Alice in Wonderland.  It was quite a different direction for me but I definitely enjoyed it.

2020  Moving House - yes we actually managed to move house in 2020 although when doing the challenge we were still in the preparation stages - we had a buyer for our house by March 2020 just before the UK locked down for Covid.  We didn't actually move until the September but the process gave me plenty of ammunition for A-Z topics.

2021  Life in Lockdown - again I drew on life experiences for the challenge last year.  2021 wasn't a good blogging year for me and I did hope the A-Z challenge would improve things.  It didn't really - it boosted the amount of posting at the beginning of the year but overall my posts were down almost 50% compared to 2020 by the end of the year.

I'm hoping that I'm going to do better this year and I've already completed the Just Jot it January challenge so I'm looking ahead to April but I have no idea yet what to write about.

Maybe I need to let Alice out of the cupboard.

Suggestions in the comments would be more than welcomed.