Last month I embarked on a journey to give a new lease of life to my blog. I was not sure if that attempt of mine would revive my blog but I thought of giving a try just like I did in 2015. Creativity is a powerful tool that us bloggers carry wherever we go. Be it blogging, thinking and no matter what creativity can take you miles. In a creative field like Digital media and marketing, you can express and showcase your creative talent. Unfortunately, I am not in a creative field but I take part in such challenges to ensure that my creative juices that drain.
I thought of coming up with something different this year. I have been seeing lots of He-She stories on various Facebook pages since last few months. My challenge posts for this year had a theme unlike last year where I wrote on random topics be it emotional, logical, technical and whatever struck my mind. The ultimate goal last year was to survive the Challenge and luckily by hook or crook I did so. But this year, I wasn’t myself sure about taking part and my blog was on the verge of kicking the bucket. I surely didn’t want to let it die after having a wonderful blog space of 10 plus years. Definitely, that would be the meanest thing to do anyone. This blog for me has been special. This has given me the platform to showcase my creative talent. And that’s why I say that this blog is an arsenal that contains all my creative spears. I am quite sure I would have missed a lot if this blog didn’t happen in 2006. Seriously!
The real challenge behind writing a chain post was that people aren’t used to returning back and read all the posts. Why would someone come back to your blog and wait for what happens next? The ‘goras’ generally do a blog hop where they randomly stroll through the blogs listed on the Linky and read and comment on the blog posts. That’s what we all do; don’t we? Some serious set of questions did haunt me. Well, there was no question about people reading or not, because I write for myself. But this challenge was to break all the boundaries because I wasn’t used to writing blog posts every day. I am not of that kind. If I was then I wouldn’t be sitting still at 616 blog posts even after 10.5 years of blogging and I have seen people who have written 2000 plus after that much time. It’s not all about numbers, it is about having time for things that you love to do.
So that was when I came across a tweet from Chandni, a blogger from the Blog chatter community who had formed a cool A to Z community. She soon added me to the Twitter group and I saw many interesting individuals each with some special skills. And I got to see some familiar faces from our Westerlies team like Karan and Rohan. I also had my blog buddies and my ex-blog buddies like Simar, Ruby, Mithila, Kadambari and so on. So through this group, I made lots of friends and they regularly visited my serial stories every day. That removed the apprehensions! And there was never looking back, it all happened smoothly.
He-She story is a story about two individuals basically known to each other since a long time. They are in a relationship and know minute details about each other. And one incident leaves a big mark on the girls mind. She has doubts if their relationship could survive. When you fail to set love as your priority then it can pose a serious threat to the love life. Trust me the main protagonist in our story faced the beat! The constantly nagging irritating girlfriend can be more dangerous than an earthquake of 7.6 magnitudes. Our story starts smoothly and gets off to an interesting start in the beginning letters and somehow I felt that the story could have been better in the middle part but sadly I couldn’t pay much attention due to my deliverables at work. But the last few letters were very much known. I had once said to Reema Michelle that everyone knows the outcome of the fight between Mowgli and the Shere Khan. So, it was quite obvious that it has to be a happy story.
Now Lets come to the retrospection part.
What went well?
The idea of writing all the posts in advance and having them scheduled much before the month of April was something that didn’t struck me before. It was just a random experiment this year and on suggestion of a fellow blogger I tried doing this and it worked well. Secondly, the concept of having the bitstrip cartoons was good. These two worked well.
What went wrong?
I personally feel that I just wanted to finish this thing ASAP. My busy schedule was coming in between all this and I felt that there was a void somewhere and I sadly never had much to address this void. But I think it came out unexpected.
What better could be done?
Due to paucity of time, I couldn’t pay much attention to my challenge post. The idea of embedding the bitstrip cartoons came at the last moment. I had reused certain images that I had posted for some other letters. I wanted to correct it but major release works prevented me. Next time onwards, the planning needs to be done one month in advance. Only if I am ready to take the challenge in 2017. Priorities and things may change at that time but we all should live in the present including myself. 😉
I strategized each post and made my readers wait for the next post. Your comments were a great source of motivation for me. Thank you guys! You all have been too kind to me and my blog. Even a zillion thanks won’t suffice!
If you would like to read the posts then here is the list from A to Z
- A – The Art Attack #AtoZChallenge
- B – The Eye of the Beholder #AtoZChallenge
- C – Can I? #AtoZChallenge
- D – Delusion of Love #AtoZChallenge
- E – Power of Expectation #AtoZChallenge
- F- Playing with Fire #AtoZChallenge
- G – Greatness isn’t self-proclaimed #AtoZChalleng…
- H – A Hate Story #AtoZChallenge
- I – Wasting time with an Idiot #AtoZChallenge
- J – Tell me, it’s a Joke #AtoZChallenge
- K – Kissed #AtoZChallenge
- L – Love and Lies #AtoZChallenge
- M – Men are from Mars #AtoZChallenge
- N – Not a love story #AtoZChallenge #600
- O – Out of sight but not mind #AtoZChallenge
- P – Puzzled #AtoZChallenge
- Q – Quitting Love #AtoZChallenge
- R – Remembering you #AtoZChallenge
- S – Sorry, can’t get over you! #AtoZChallenge
- T – Talk to me once more #AtoZChallenge
- U – Us again, Us always #AtoZChallenge
- V – Women are from Venus #AtoZChallenge
- W – We love us #AtoZChallenge
- X – Love is not a Xmas tree #AtoZChallenge
- Y – You ,Me, Us #AtoZChallenge
- Z – Zero Hate, Only Love #AtoZChallenge
- I take this opportunity thank every one who took time to visit this blog and read all the April challenge posts. I am thankful to you all for taking your time and letting me know how much you liked the story. Thanks 🙂
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You did a great job, buddy! Most important is the reflection part – if we all do it, our lives will be much better.
I enjoyed your posts though I have not commented on each one. The bitstrip cartoons were a great idea. Congratulations and Best wishes! 🙂
I loved the bitstrips cartoon. It was different from the rest. Congratulations. Great job.
he-she stories were quite innovative and in 55 words a tough cookie too….but you never lost the script or the word and context. Had fun reading those and the reflection and retrospection too. You quite analyse everything don't you 🙂
I think you did great 🙂 In the last week, even I was exhausted and wanted to finish ASAP … but I loved finding new blogs and new materials to read.