A to Z still Going

Just returned from a great vacation on the beach in Daytona, Florida. We watched the sunrise several mornings - just breathtaking.  I need a better camera.

Sunrise on Daytona Beach, May 23, 2014

Now I'm a guest on the A to Z Challenge blog.  Hop over for a visit.  And then visit M.J.Joachim's Writing Tips and take the A to Z survery.  Still riding on the road trip.
                                                                                God bless, Maria

A to Z Challenge 2014, Reflections

-->

As I reflect on this year’s A to Z challenge, I find a smile come to my face, satisfied to have completed another and already planning for next April.  Why smile?  Well it feels good to accomplish something that is, well, a challenge.   It is always fun to reacquaint with friends from the previous year’s challenge, meet new friends and cultures, and discover talented bloggers to follow.  It’s also a real delight to find how I grow through the challenge.  I appreciate alternative views a little more.  I find myself more compassionate towards the hurting.  I understand blogging, writing, and thinking a bit better.

1.     Loved catching up with some blog friends I made in last year’s challenge.

2.     Loved meeting new friends.

3.     Loved visiting with people from diverse cultures and from around the world.

4.     Loved being challenged to write.

5.     Loved being challenged to think and grow.

6.     Glad to be back blogging again after such a long hiatus.

7.     Sad so many didn’t finish.

8.     Glad I learned so much from some great bloggers like Silvia at Silvia Writes, who wrote on all things Romanian and Sharon at Shells, Tales, and Sails who taught us about all things fruit.  Did you know there was an ice cream fruit?

9.     Sad I wasn’t able to visit 5 new A to Zers every day.

10. Glad for those I did visit and revisit.  I hope to continue to check out others on the list in the coming days and months. 

Things I learned that were helpful.

1.     It was valuable to check in with the challenge website as often as I could to see the daily post there.  Often there were helpful tips to enhance the challenge experience.  Also, those who are commenting on the challenge website are among those who are surely continuing and so they make good first visits.

2.     It was nice not to have a particular theme, but I find that I enjoy visiting those who did, so I am thinking about that for next year.

3.     I like being able to find out more about the bloggers themselves.  So I appreciate reading the about me link and seeing their photo.  I may have to do a better job of that myself.

4.     I really liked when someone recommended another blogger, and I usually went over to visit them as well.  So I did do that a few times.  If I plan it out better, I'd like to include  more recommendations or bloggers I found worth a visit.  There are plenty I could and would recommend.

5.     Last year I planned it out a bit more.  That was helpful especially when time got tight.  However, I feel less stress about it at this year’s conclusion.  Is that because it wasn’t all new or because of just getting to it when and if I could?  I don’t know, but I think, if possible, I’ll plan ahead a bit next year.

Thank you to all who stopped by.    Thank you to the all the A to Z team for your dedication in seeing this through and encouraging all of us.  I don't know how you do it, but I know it wouldn't happen if not for you.  I appreciate you.  And thank you again, Lee, for your brainchild.  Really enjoyed visiting with each one of you.

                                                                                                                  God bless, Maria

A to Z Challenge, 2014

Award Flu

I have not signed into or written on my blog for months.  Honestly, I found myself paralyzed by the blog awards.  It may seem silly, but what I found flattering and uplifting, I simultaneously allowed to confine and enslave me.

Not uncommon in my life, once other things clamoring for my attention filled my time, I found it easy to neglect blogging.  What had so recently been a joy to engage in, was now a weight.  Though I wanted to make time for it, I likewise wanted to avoid it.  The months went by and before I knew what had happened, blogging was but an afterthought, something I would read and respond to rather than a personal venture of my own.  How did the kindness of an award turn into a burden?

When I received my first award, I was touched that someone might think enough of what I had shared of myself to affirm me.  I followed the award reqs and I felt encouraged as was intended.  Then, as is almost routine among bloggers because everyone is about supporting other bloggers in their craft, more awards continued to come.  I appreciated the acknowledgement.  Wanting to honor those who had honored me by following through with what was expected in the awards, I found my strong sense of fulfilling my obligations shackling me and I couldn't break free.

The blogging community is about empowering others to write by providing tools and incentives to do just that.  The awards are one of those vehicles by which we can be a support staff to each other.  In no way do I want to impugn the giving of blogging awards.  Rather it was my response I hope to discourage in others.  I let self-imposed expectations inhibit me from doing something through which I found satisfaction.  I put up my own unnecessary road blocks.  Initially getting and responding to the awards was fun for me, but soon it became a trap for me.  I felt this cloud hanging over me.  I needed to let it rain my responses, I thought, before I could write anything else.  Pretty soon I didn't want to write anymore.

I tripped myself up by not letting go of something I didn't need to hold onto.  It is a real lesson for me personally in more than just blogging.  I like to say, "Get over yourself.  Get out of your own way,"  and here I was very much in my own way, not knowing how to move.

I just have to admit that fulfilling the requirements of the awards, as fun as they are, has got to be a secondary concern for me or award flu might set in again.  Better to get over myself and get on my way to delighting in living.

Reflecting On the A to Z Challenge

A to Z Challenge:  Reflections:  

A to Z Reflections

The A to Z Challenge really started for me back a few month in preparation for April. I began tracking the A to Z challenge website and gaining tips and tricks for how to prepare, as well as how to get and give the most in the challenge.  And I did learn oodles from that daily check in.  I practiced daily what I was learning, like visiting blogs of those on the list and prewriting some of the A to Z entries.  Both of these were huge helps.  In fact, if I participate next year, and right now I think I will, I’ll start even earlier and try to not only get most prewritten but also pre-posted, which I did not do until we got very close to the kick-off.  

Starting off in April wasn’t too tough.  I was able to get a week’s worth of pre-posts ready to go, and so the daily 5 new blog visits and revisiting those who became blogging friends or those blogs that really intrigued me or those that were kind enough to stop by my blog was not initially too difficult.  However, as I began to fall behind on the rest of life, running to catch up, and as I didn’t have a week in advance ready anymore, if even a day, and as the revisits mounted up, well the CHALLENGE of the event began to challenge me.  

I imagine I am not much different than others in this regard.  At that point I not only had to catch up some days with life outside of the blogosphere, I started to feel like I had to catch up with life in blogland as well, because I am fanatical about keeping my commitments, and I made a commitment to visit as well as write my own entry.  So by golly, I was going to do it!

In spite of the stress in the second half, what a joy it has been connecting with the  like-minded, coming to understand the not-so-like-minded, visiting places and people from around the world, being inspired by the young, the old, and the simply inspiring, and so much more that many of us would never have been exposed to.  It has been a truly growing experience.  Not only writing everyday in this way, but also connecting in a way that is, well, out of this world in more ways than one, I have found myself very deeply contemplative on some points and prayerful for new people.  The fun, the inspiration, the challenge, have all been a healthy stretch.  

I am very grateful that God laid it on Arlee’s heart to get this off the ground those few years back.  It is incredible how many people’s lives around the world A to Z has touched and how it has connected so many of us in such a good way.  Recently I was listening to a speaker who was addressing the current state of our information age that we know so many things that in reality are trivial and unnecessary to our daily lives, and yet we don’t know what is happening in our neighbors lives.  True and sad.  Yet this challenge brought lives together in an explosion of discovery.  Perhaps some of it was trivial and unnecessary, but I have to say I do feel like it did add to the quality of my life, my personal development, and my relationships across the spectrum of this world and the cyber-world.  Thank you Arlee and thank you to all of you who have connected with me through this A-Z adventure.  

A to Z Challenge Reflections