A to Z Challenge 2016 Reflections

 

 

            It is time to reflect upon the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. This year my theme was Classical Music. I was looking through my notes of reflections and I decided to pull up my reflections post from last year. This is my second year to participate in the challenge and the things I wrote about connecting with the blogging community still apply this year. The main difference is that this time I knew what I was getting into and had somewhat of a plan of setting time aside each night for comments. What I did not anticipate was my incomplete posts. I am a procrastinator the majority of the time, and only a few of my letters were finished more than one day before they were due. I will say that it was not a total procrastination, because I had all of my composers picked out by the beginning of March with a few facts I already knew. And I had all of my featured videos picked out and saved in a playlist. I still had to arrange my posts and do a little research for extra facts on the composers for most of the letters. Early on in April, I mentioned something about an elaborate idea for next year’s challenge. I must declare now that I will not carry out that idea unless I have all the posts ready by sign up time! Otherwise, I think I might go simple next year if I participate.

            Beyond the post writing, I enjoyed making visits and comments a lot more this year. I understood more about engaging with the community and I connected with some new blogging friends, which makes the experience worth the effort. I did notice something that I have seen before but never fully understood its purpose until now. Many blogs include a blogroll of some of their favorite bloggers, and I noticed some people utilized the blogroll specifically for A to Z themes they liked. That is an excellent idea! I think I will get that set up so I can try it out on my blog.

            I want to say a big thank you for all of my friends and fellow bloggers who followed my theme this year. I learned a lot about the composers just like many of you did. Many of them lived interesting lives, and I am most surprised by the number of composers who did not reach the age of 40. Before my research, I only knew of Franz Schubert because I had heard about his “Unfinished” symphony. It turns out that many composers left works unfinished or lost, and it does make me wonder what more they could have come up with if they had lived full lives. I also want to thank those who left words of encouragement and my two best friends who provided their support via texts. It was a fun month, but I am glad that we have reached the month of May! I will be taking a short blogging break for a couple weeks. I do plan to visit some of your posts and I’m hoping to concentrate on some writing during my “time off.” If you missed my theme during the challenge, I have all of my posts and my video playlist set up on the A to Z Challenge 2016 page. I hope everyone has a great month and congratulations to those who completed the A to Z Challenge!