Reflections

In order to finish up with challenge, all participants have been asked to complete a reflection post speaking to their experiences with the A-to-Z Blog Challenge. Though I have spoken about completing my challenge, I hadn’t reflected back on this experience.

What I liked about the A-to-Z Challenge:

This was the first time I’d completed a blogging challenge so this gave me a framework to push myself with my blog. I felt like I needed the push to write and post more.

I liked that I found several blogs I wouldn’t have normally found and enjoyed the connection with other bloggers.

I also liked the badges for each day and I really appreciated all of the graphics.

What I didn’t like about the challenge:

There were so many blogs to check out. I just didn’t have time to see as many as I would have liked. Many of them (including my own) didn’t indicate the type and so that made it difficult to find. Next time I decide to do this I will label mine correctly. I struggled to go back and correct this but wasn’t able to.

By relying on the graphics, I didn’t have as much color in my blog post as would have been helpful. This is something I will change next time.

What worked:

I didn’t find out about this challenge until just about a week before it started so I didn’t have a chance to chose a theme and that wasn’t my focus this time around. For the most part I wrote my blog post the night before it came out. Sometimes I wrote two. I liked the fact that the only guideline was that the letter of the alphabet must be used. This made me stretch my imagination.

Though I didn’t really rely on the blog posts for encouragement, I enjoyed the reminders and the drive to keep going.

What didn’t work:

I’m not sure there was anything that didn’t work. If it didn’t work, then normally I would put it up to operator error. Mostly that was me not having any idea what to write about. The site worked well and though I think it was a struggle to catch all of the blogs who weren’t participating, I didn’t find that many.

For me, what didn’t work is I underestimated the amount of time that it would take to keep things up and going. If I had been able to plan for a theme and perhaps work ahead a bit, it may have been better. Though I enjoyed the learning that came out of winging it. Next year I will have a different plan. Maybe.

Finally:

As I said in previous posts, this was an incredible experience for me as I am a relatively new blogger. This challenge helped me to overcome some anxiety that would come each time I pressed the schedule button. I am grateful for that. It has helped me to grow as a writer and blogger, though I have a long way to go.

Share your experiences with any challenge you’ve done this year.