A – Z Reflections 2017 – #AtoZChallenge

I had hoped to have been posting my survivor badge and talking about how well this years challenge has gone, well truth it 2017 I FAILED!!!!

I did manage about a third of the posts they were posted late and I did not feel I really wanted to get stuck in. The truth was that my normal exploits in A – Z have been planned ahead of time, I pick a theme research a couple of options for each letter than go with the one that interests me the most. This year I was already chasing my tail, theme reveal day arrived and I had not even given it any thought, I should possibly have stuck with my gut reaction at that point which was to skip this year but instead I thought I could wing it. I made a snap decision to do the dictionary thing without considering how it would play out. I mean fair enough I did drop lucky with the words I got, partly I suspect due to the dictionary I was using being one I have a had a while that maybe fell open at pages I had previously use, but that luck could not have held out for the whole thing, in fact the next word I had picked for M was mandible which would have ended with a post on wrestling.

So what did I learn, well first I need to be prepared better, I need to pick a theme ahead of time which excites me and makes me want to write about it. I need to begin preparing the posts well in advance, research and write them with at least a week in advance so I don’t end up falling behind when life gets busy. Secondly I learnt that when I fall behind I have a tendency to want to quit, and while knowing when to call it quits is not a bad thing I need to learn not to talk myself out of doing things because it might involve knuckling down and focusing my energy. Some times we can actually learn more from our failings than our successes, they teach us our own strengths and weaknesses, and we all have plenty of both. I find that when I am doing badly in one area of my life I tend to find everything is going badly and becomes hard work, for example being tired and stressed at work makes me grumpy at home and makes it harder for me to focus to write, this gives me two options to either try to be happy all the time, which I am pretty sure is impossible without serious drugs, or to learn to compartmentalise more, and to force myself to sit at the computer and write no matter what my mood even if it means writing something completely different to the piece I an working on at that time. I have also been struggling to fill my journal in lately which again goes alongside this lethargy I have been feeling in general.

Some times it does us good to really stop and think about what is going on with us, why we are struggling, are we taking too much on? Are outside influences having a negative impact? In my case I think it was simply poor time management skills combined with a lack or direction both in terms of writing , blogging and life generally, hopefully the writing of this post it actually part of me turning this around.