A to Z Challenge 2013 Reflections Post

First of all I successfully finished the A to Z Challenge (and congratulations to all fellow participants). It was a great month. A big THANK YOU to all the A to Z team. I really enjoyed the Challenge and honestly have no criticisms on how the challenge is run and managed. As always the most frustrating thing is visiting blogs that are not participating – however, the team successfully cut down on the number of irrelevant blogs and when bloggers drop out there is not much one can do about it (and they can still be good blogs). Overall, a great team effort.

My personal reflections…

This year I entered 2 blogs into the challenge: this one and my writing blog Putting Pen to Paper. I still can’t believe I did it – it was intense. Yes it did help that I had pre-scheduled the posts of this blog (mainly because I also had the Filofax Inserts to prepare to accompany the blog post), but it was still busy and continuing to write the posts for my second blog was a challenge.

the good, the bad…

For me the most difficult thing about the challenge was keeping up with my regular writing (my regular blogging went out the window) and I did not work enough on my book. I only visited an average of 10 blogs a day throughout the challenge so I have a hefty post-challenge road-trip ahead of me. Originally I had hoped to use the Sundays to “catch up” with reading other people’s blogs but this didn’t really happen.

I have mentioned the difficult but some great things did come out of the challenge as well:

• I found some great new blogs to read
• I gained some new subscribers
• I boosted my inserts collection for my personal sized filofax
• I had the inspiration to start a new blog (more on this later)
• I got plenty of use out of both my A to Z challenge notebook and my Blogging Filofax.

the blogging platform….

Perhaps one of the most interesting things about the challenge was entering one WordPress and one blogger blog into the challenge. I still by far prefer blogging using WordPress, however, the majority of the blogs in the challenge were Blogger. I found it easier to comment and link blogger to blogger  (although I still have no idea how to set up google friend connect  – sorry guys!).

the notebook….

The A to Z notebook has well and truly been used and scribbled over – just like how any good notebook should be:

The Filofax also got pretty chunky pretty quickly with all the inspiration floating around in my head and needing somewhere to land.

and finally… what now?

In many ways I am sad that the challenge is over (although I endeavour to carry on with my post-challenge road trip and finish visiting everyone on the list). Also I will try to check in with updates on the progress of the post-challenge road trip. But the real news is that I am starting a new blog (yes, a third blog is being tossed into the ring) . It will be a companion blog to my Career Development Workbook which I am currently putting together – so if you are interested in career development or particularly enjoyed my a to z theme on Putting Pen to Paper don’t be afraid to head on over and subscribe.