Monday, March 21, 2016

Blogging from A to Z Again! This Year, My Theme Is ...




Last April I was inspired to do this crazy blog challenge; one post a day for the month (except Sundays) and the topic of each daily post was based on a letter.  I learned about the challenge on April 1, so for the first week I was one day late.  Still, it was (in retrospect) a heckuva lot of fun, and a great writing kickstarter.  So this year, I'm doing it again!

Today is the day to announce your theme.  Of course, I've already got the theme of "life afloat," so this is a theme-within-a-theme, so to speak.  After 13+ years living aboard a small sailboat, I've learned a lot about downsizing, minimalism, and tiny home living that's not restricted just to boating.  So much of this style I take for granted, so this year's blog challenge is my chance to revisit it, summarize it, and pass it on.  A few letters -- B and Q and W come to mind, are going to be about blogging in general, just to keep it real.

Because I learned about the challenge at the last minute, last year, I had no time to pre-write my posts; my "planning" consisted of writing down at least one nautical word for each letter of the alphabet just to prove to myself that the writing would be possible, and then each day I had 24 hours to write that day's post.  This year, I had plenty of advance notice ... and guess what?  I didn't take advantage of it to actually write any posts in advance!  Again, all I did was make the alphabetical list of topics, from "Anchoring Out, Anger-ing Out" to "Zout & Zwarte Peper (Dutch for 'salt & black pepper')."  I'm looking forward to the challenge and the freshness and the informality I get from posting with those short turnarounds, but the procrastination is also a consequence of my basic personality type (which I'll have more about when I get to the post for "W.")

There are almost 500 bloggers signed up for the challenge; links to their blogs are here.



If you are also an A to Z challenger or a blogger on a theme similar to mine feel free to post a link below.  See you in April!