This was my first A to Z Challenge and it was intense to say the least, but a great intense. First off, I'd like to thank all of the co-hosts for their hard work put into this challenge. It felt great to be a part of it!
I met some awesome people during this challenge. I wish I'd had the time to explore more blogs. Most of my nights consisted of writing the post for the next day and visiting 10 to 15 blogs. Since I couldn't really start working until my three-month-old went to bed, between 8:30pm - 9pm, I was sometimes up until midnight trying to keep up--which I paid for the next day at work.
I consider myself a novice blogger and each new group or challenge I find is an adventure. My biggest takeaways are planning better and having a theme. I loved the themes of blogs I visited. With this being my first year, I wanted to give myself every opportunity and not have to write within the constraints of a theme. But next year I know I'm up for the added challenge. My plan at the beginning of the month was to write the week's posts each weekend so I could focus my weekday nights on commenting. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. I started out behind and never caught up. Next year I will plan for that in advance--not the weekend before the challenge starts.
I also learned from the challenge about the importance of having a blogging schedule. I'm seeing that post schedule-wise, it's good to be predictable, so I'm planning to do that moving forward. I think having a guaranteed three posts a week will be a good start: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. That will also leave me ample time to comment and explore.
Thank you to all of my new followers! And thank you for all the wonderful comments. I've felt like a real blogger this past month. It's been great talking with you throughout April and I hope we can continue to do so. I'm sorry I wasn't able to get to more blogs, but I'll be using the lists for this and the IWSG to branch out and meet new people as I continue down this blogging journey.
