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.

  

Wendysday 26/9/18

 This is usually me on a Wednesday morning after a day looking after Nathan.

Today's prompt from RDP is inspire. (Click on the image to visit the site.)

Back in the day when I first blogged on Yahoo and then Multiply before ending up here on Blogger I used to do a "Wendysday" post on Wednesdays which started off being mostly (well ok all) about me.  I worked my way through lists of various favourites and all sorts of things.

Looking back the last Wendysday posts were in 2012!  Blogging took a bit of a break after that.  During 2013 -14 blogs were few and far between.  Life wasn't good.  Things have picked up since then but Wendysday didn't.  Then I discovered the Wednesday Hodgepodge that Joyce hosted over at From This side of the Pond 

Sadly Joyce has recently retired the Hodgepodge - life moves on.  We've both gained Grandchildren in the last year or so.  Priorities change.

Today feels like it's going to be a Wendysday though.  It's often known as Hump Day but I've never been good with that term.  To me, things that give me the hump are things that annoy or upset me.  So to call Wednesday Hump Day makes it sound bad.  Of course I understand why people call it Hump Day but when you no longer work it doesn't quite have the same significance.

Anyway back to Wendysday.  It's the breathing day for me between the two days I look after my Grandson Nathan.  I love him to bits and he is so good usually.  I really enjoy looking after him but I need a breather inbetween.  Especially at the moment with a very dodgy knee.  It's improving but slowly.  I want to run but walking is a challenge and stairs are still proving painful.  Wednesday is also the first working day of the week for Nick so I'm home alone.  

It feels like it should be a Wendysday - a day for me to do what I want and not feel guilty about it.  I still find it hard not to feel guilty about pleasing myself and not ticking off the never ending to do list but I'm getting there.

Today I'm enjoying a lazy morning in blogland.  I have some TV shows recorded that I'll probably watch and it's lovely and sunny so I'm definitely (well maybe) going out for a walk.  I've also been INSPIRED to start thinking ahead to next year's A-Z challenge.  What?  Yes!  Why?  I've been selected to write a guest post for the A-Z site.

I've never been asked to do a guest post before so I'm both excited and apprehensive.  After all I'm a blogger who blogs not a writer who blogs or a blogger who writes.  But just putting pen to paper (or composing a blog) makes me a writer and thinking about doing the guest post gave me a few ideas and it also prompted me to think ahead to the next A-Z challenge.  Who knows, if I start now I might not end up flying by the seat of my pants come April!  Deadlines were never my thing.

I've done it! A-Z Challenge here I come

For those of you who have never heard of the A-Z Challenge you're probably wondering what I've done.  Those of you who HAVE heard of the challenge are also probably wondering what I've done!

Signing up for a non stop challenge of blogging every day throughout April (well with Sundays off) when my average number of posts a month currently stands at 13 means I need to seriously up my game.

But that's one point of the challenge.  It does make you blog every day.  And although my momentum may have dropped I'm still here more often than I was and I'm also following blogs more.  It isn't easy and sometimes it's hard to find inspiration but there are lots of blogs out there to help with this.

The wonderful Hodgepodge on Wednesdays is just one example.  Joyce does a great job of giving us new questions every week.  I've spotted some other regular challenges that I want to give a try.

Then there's my own Friday Five News where I try and find news stories to highlight each week.  That's good for me because it makes me explore the news.  I don't read a newspaper much during the week or always watch the news so it's a good way of finding out what's going on in the world.  Although I want to get a bit more proactive with that and catch ideas during the week rather than just relying on what's happening on Fridays.

I don't yearn to be a published author.  I don't think I have a novel locked away inside me.  But I do love to write and I do like the interaction that blogging gives.  Last year I was #1100 and something when I signed up.  This year I've made it in at #499.  I do have a theme in mind.  I've even done some preparation on that and hopefully I will be able to get some posts done in advance and scheduled.

It's good to be looking forward to something.  It's been a tough week here.
 

Monday meander 8/6/15

I love chocolate.  I have a small box of Godiva chocolates on my kitchen table.  I bought them yesterday when we were on a chocolate walking tour in central London.  The tour was a present to me from my son and his partner for Mother's Day.  They had bought 2 places so hubby came too.  We met our guide by The Ritz hotel and we wandered through the streets of Mayfair visiting several very classy chocolate shops.  We learnt about the history of chocolate and also got to taste some samples.  I was in heaven.

Several of the shops were very small but we also visited Fortnum and Mason which supplies the Queen.  It's a very impressive shop with a huge chocolate selection.  Of course it also sells teas, preserves and oh I could go on and on.  The staff uniform is very traditional.  It was actually the first time I had ever visited the store.  We notice this everytime we do something like this - we've lived in London all our lives but there is so much of it we haven't seen.  When we retire.....

Of course some people think I've retired already.  The jury is still out on that at the moment.  I had a better week last week having got back to scheduling things to do and there is still lots to be done at home so I've no plans to look for a job just yet.

As for my June goals well I managed to complete reading all the Hodgepodge posts from last week.  Thanks to all who left me comments.  I hope I've responded appropriately.  I also managed to visit 10 blogs on the A-Z Road Trip list at the weekend.  That was interesting.  One blog hadn't even posted any A-Z posts, one site seemed to be a promotional site for books and another had quit after only a few posts.  Not sure why they included themselves on the Road Trip.

I also managed over 10 miles of walking but I'm yet to get on my bike.  (Although I did pump up the flat tyres.)

Today I have finally got round to touching up the paintwork in our kitchen.  We had a couple of patches where I think the paint was applied before the plaster underneath had totally dried out so the paint had peeled.  Nothing major but just one of those annoying things that need to be fixed.  Well today I fixed it (hopefully it won't peel again!) now I just have to take bets on how long before my hubby notices.  Maybe if I leave the painting paraphanalia around he might get the hint.

I also thinned out my Hellebore seedlings: 

I have a thriving Hellebore in the garden and it had seeded earlier this year so my gardener had me collected the seedlings to grow into new plants.  I think she has an ulterior motive - she is part of a group setting up a community garden nearby.  It is a huge undertaking and they will need all the help they can get, including donations of plants.

Well I started this post yesterday and it's now nearly bedtime today so I will end now.  It's been a good start to the week.

A - Z Road Trip & goals for June

Hmm no blogs for a few days then three in a row.  A bit like London buses.  Although that's actually not a fair comment anymore as our bus service is actually quite good locally.

Having completed the A - Z Challenge, as a means to get back into blogging regularly, I've now signed up for the Road Trip - this gives an opportunity to continue visiting the blogs of those who participated but without the pressure of trying to do all that and get a daily post done.  There's also less pressure as only 172 bloggers signed up for the Road Trip compared to the huge number that took part in the challenge. (1509 at the final count.)

I think my aim for this will be to read 10 blogs a week. (Probably at the weekend.)  I've copied the list into a word file so that I can make notes or just cross off the ones I've been to as I go along.  I'm going to start at the bottom and work my way up so that those on the bottom of the list feel some love early on.  (Be nice if some others did this as I'm near the bottom of the list!)  That should give me plenty of time to get through the list before the next challenge starts.  Yes I will be doing it again but I might try and do a bit more forward planning next time.  I'll also need a theme.  For me having a theme definitely helped.

There's one problem I have with blogging - finding the time to visit other bloggers.  Especially things like memes where the whole point of joining them is to interact with other bloggers.  I love the Wednesday Hodgepodge but it takes time to get around to all the participants.  Again I'm giving myself a target of 10 at a time until I've done the list. 

In my previous post I talked about having a schedule but also being flexible.  That said I also think I need to set myself some goals to aim for each month so for June these are as follows:

Walk at least 10 miles per week.  
Fix the curtain in my lounge (the heading tape is coming adrift)
Touch up the peeling paint in the kitchen
Strip the wallpaper in the spare room
Ride my bike

These things are realistic.  I could add in lose weight but that might not be realistic.  I'm not overweight but I'd like to weigh a bit less.  Having said that I'm not unhappy with how I am and as long as I don't go in the wrong direction I'm not going to lose sleep over how I look.  (Plus I'm not much good at dieting!)

Wendy's Waffle - A - Z Challenge Reflection

Firstly a big thank you to everyone involved in the setting up and ongoing maintenance of the challenge.  It was good to know someone was watching over us and dropping in with encouragement along the way.  I don't know how you manage to do the challenge on top of hosting/visiting etc. (And some of you have more than one blog!)  Well done!

I signed up to the A-Z Challenge in an attempt to get back into the habit of blogging.  It certainly achieved that because I managed to get to Z and hopefully the momentum will continue.

I worried at first that I might be out of my depth in that there were so many people taking part, many of whom were either published writers already or aspiring to be. I write so that makes me a writer, but not in that way.  My blog is more a memoir for me and while I try to make it humorous when I can, sometimes it's sad.  However I soon found other bloggers I could relate to and felt less of a fish out of water.  

I chose to have a theme (Family and Relations) which helped.  I planned what I would use for each letter in advance so I had a list of topics that I'd given some thought to but I hadn't put anything in writing before starting the challenge.  Some days it was a challenge to get my post done on the day but I think there was only one occasion when I was posting it just after midnight!  (I do burn the midnight oil quite a bit.)

The good things about the challenge:  

• it challenged me
• I found lots of interesting blogs to follow
• it made me more critical of my writing - I found myself editing my posts, correcting grammatical errors and generally trying to improve them

The hard things about the challenge:

• trying to visit  so many blogs and keep up with the daily posting

Things I'd do differently:

• prepare my posts in advance
• include more pictures. (Actually it would probably be more accurate to say some pictures as this is something my posts were totally lacking.)  
• I'd also try to have something interactive in the posts to encourage more comments.

Would I do it again?  Yes!

A - Z Challenge - Z is for Zenith

My theme for this challenge is family and relations.

Zenith “the culminating point or stage”

Woo Hoo – I made it!

This is the first real blogging challenge I have taken part in and I’m so pleased that I managed to complete it.  When I first saw a link to it from a blogging friend I was like, “I couldn’t do that!”  Partly that was due to the notion that it was aimed at writers and that’s not something I’m currently aspiring to.  But then I did some more checking and realised that all sorts of people join this challenge.  I’d already decided that I wanted to get back into the habit of blogging so I decided I would sign up and see how I got on.

I decided to choose a theme as I thought it might be easier to prepare posts in advance in case life got in the way and I didn’t have a lot of time on any given day.  In the event I didn’t do much advance blogging but preparing the ideas for the letters did help.  Of course there were days when things didn’t quite go to plan but somehow my posts got written and posted.

I’ve tried to visit other blogs but the huge number of participants means I’ve only scratched the surface.  As I’m writing this I note that I’m 1035 on the list (I started at 1252) and I’ve managed to check out the first 255.  I also started working down from my own entry and I’ve found quite a few interesting blogs that I’m currently following and will continue to do so.

One thing I have found myself doing is trying to ensure my writing is grammatically correct and that it flows.  Sometimes I know I can write huge long sentences and it’s not easy to tell what I’m writing about!  My husband’s pedantic trait (especially regarding grammar) is rubbing off on me.

I hope to continue blogging on a regular basis and to find interesting topics.  There are also a few meme type blogs that I might join in with now the pressure of this challenge is over. 

 
If you’ve been following me, thank you.  It means a lot to know I’m not completely in a void with this.  This may be the zenith of this particular challenge but tomorrow’s a brand new day.  I hope you’ll continue with me on this journey.

A - Z Challenge - Y is for Y Chromosome

My theme for this challenge is family and relations.

Y chromosome “that which makes us male”

At a lot of points in my life I’ve had 3 males in the house. Sometimes my daughter has been there too so it was 3:2 but often it was 3:1. They are all typically male in that they drink beer, (and various other alcoholic drinks), they watch football, they’re messy, they’re noisy and sometimes they still leave the toilet seat up! (They’ve all got better with that as time has gone on. I can be a very persistent nagger!
 
They are also caring, well-adjusted and mature adults that are good to have around.
 
Apart from the times when hubby has had just a little too much alcohol. This changes him for a relatively quiet person to someone with verbal diarrhoea. That would be bad enough but it’s usually argumentative verbal diarrhoea. It’s also usually when he’s been out on his own and he returns to wake me up from sleep, wanting to chat. He of course cannot comprehend that I do not want to chat with him, let alone get involved in a disagreement when he is incapable of being rational. Due to his irrationality he then gets more argumentative when I won’t engage in the conversation. I’m sure you get the picture. But the really annoying thing about this is that he never wakes up with a hangover!

A - Z Challenge - X is for X Chromosome

My theme for this challenge is family and relations.

X chromosome “that which makes us female”

Well I was really struggling for an X letter word, especially one that fits in with my theme.  Of course I resorted to the dictionary and this seemed appropriate.

I’m definitely female but I’m not a girly girl.  I’m much more likely to be found in casual clothes, usually jeans than smart stuff.  I don’t enjoy shopping for clothes like some people do.  I’m also not very adventurous in my choices.  As for shoes, my days of wearing high heels for any length of time are long gone.  In fact it’s hard to get comfortable shoes at all due to issues with my toe joints.  (I had operations on both my big toe joints as a teenager to correct bunions which meant reshaping the joint.  As I’ve got older they’ve become quite painful on and off especially depending on the shoes I’m wearing.)

One of the best presents my hubby ever gave me was a personal shopper experience.  I needed an outfit to attend my daughter’s graduation but I also needed new clothes as well and the personal shopper was great at getting me to try on things I never would have even looked at let alone try on.  Some I still didn’t like but some things surprised me.  It was a really useful experience.

I’m also not great at looking after myself as in manicures/pedicures facials that sort of thing.  Now that I have more time on my hands maybe I should spend more time on looking after them!  A good start would probably be throwing away my old nail polishes and starting afresh! 

The one concession I do make for myself is getting my hair done regularly.  I went grey quite early and I progressed from having just a few highlights at first, then to a full colour and now I have a full colour with highlights.  I have it done professionally so it’s expensive but it’s my one luxury and I don’t plan on giving it up, job or no job!  There are times when I wish I hadn’t started the whole colouring thing but I know I would look much older in my natural grey colour so I guess in that respect I’m definitely a girly girl with plenty of vanity!