Looking Back at the A - Z Challenge

What a Ride!  That is summing up my 'A to Z Challenge' experience in three short words.

Those of you who followed this blog before I started the challenge know that my original intent of the blog was to just talk about what I was doing in retirement.  That didn't last long as I seemed to be blogging about anything and everything that even remotely crossed my path.

I am not a professional, or even amateur, writer.  Yes, I had something published: an article in a financial journal, talking about cash disbursements; not exactly arousing reading.

And I have written legislation drafts for the State that eventually were enacted into law, but only after the professional staffers rewrote them to conform to code and make it 'head-scratching' to read.

But my blog is mostly ramblings that even my own children do not read.  I have said before that I am surprised that anyone reads it.  The Challenge changed all that.

I found bloggers in India, England, Brazil, Australia, etc. that I really enjoyed.  I think I doubled my number of followers - all the way up to 22.  Woo-hoo! 

Certainly the challenge was a way better tool for finding interesting blogs than just hitting the 'next blog' button in Google.  I found people who could spell, use punctuation correctly, use the correct tense and be interesting all at the same time.  Who knew?  lol

I regret that I did not have a lot of time to check out all the bloggers in the Challenge.  I would find some time and read a number of blogs, sometimes finding some I enjoyed and sometimes just shaking my head.  But there were truly blogs to appeal to just about every interest there is.

I thought about many topics for the Challenge before I settled on my past travels.  It was great reliving those adventures.  I've even thought about topics for next year.  Gardening, recipes, great novels and characters in them ...  Who knows what I will choose, but this was so much fun I will definitely be back.

I am glad I took the advice to write my posts in advance.  Had I not done that, I would not have finished the Challenge. 

I certainly can not compete with the many professional writers who participated, but I enjoyed the ride and am so glad I found them.  If you are looking for some interesting blogs, check out the ones I follow on the right.  And come back next year if not before.