Well, till now, I've normally done a short version and a longer one for every challenge, but this time...things are different, so just one version. April has been super packed - I was travelling in the UK for a good part, meanwhile a favourite aunt passed away back in Kolkata, the West Bengal elections, sundry other big, small events. With spillover into May as well.
I had decided on a proper theme this time, no clubbing of letters, no cobbled together last minute anyhow posts was the main objective, I did achieve that. Yesss!
But very little else. The photo search took absolutely aeons, the regular film ones are in albums dated from 1980s to 2005-06, the digital ones in memory sticks scattered all over - my housekeeping is abysmal on these, so needle-in-haystack type search cut into precious writing time. Lesson learnt - not going to base any themes on non-digital images again. Nostalgia is all very fine, but get the images off the net. Less grainy, less of a time suck
I missed out rather a lot of monuments/places - the gardens of Tehran, the Jeita Grotto in Beirut, the Khan el Khalili and Sharia Muiz in Cairo, the Qutb Minar and Red Fort in Delhi, the Hazratbal in Kashmir, the Ghats of Varanasi, the fountains of Rome, the Mosque Cathedral of Cordoba, the Lindenhof in Zurich and on and on...either because I couldn't find/didn't have photos, or just plain forgot and/or the word count was getting unmanageably high.
My reading was frightful. That was always going to be the case of course - if I was going to write elaborate posts on the day, there was going to be hardly any crumbs left for visiting or reading. However, I did even more poorly than I'd expected. Not signing up for the road trip or anything, but I'm going to be visiting some of the bloggers and read, now that I'm not scrambling to post something everyday.
Thank you to the hosts and all those who visited, read and commented. My apologies for the visits I could not return and the comments I couldn't respond to. I intend to remedy that rudeness this month and catch up as much as I am able.
That's it. Another year, another A-Z. I enjoyed myself, I always do at the A-Z. Will I be back in 27? Life permitting, yes. See you same place same time next year, hopefully. Till then stay well and keep blogging.
After doing the Challenge for so many years I realized it was just too much. Hard to keep up and so much is missed. Like you, I needed a lot of images and that just takes too much time.
ReplyDeleteNow, time to organize those photos!
Organising photos is much more of a challenge than the A-Z!
DeleteI do love the challenge, but I'm with Alex. It's a lot. Especially for a number-obsessed nut like me. There are too many people I want to visit and then I get stressed about it. The times I participated, I had to prewrite everything and then just focus on commenting. That's a lot of work just in prep.
ReplyDeleteAny serious reading means prewriting everything, yes.
DeleteYeah, the visiting other blogs is always the hard part. It's so time consuming, so of course it's going to be the first to go, especially when things get crazy.
ReplyDeleteStrangely enough, I managed to visit quite a lot of blogs when the list ran in thousands and can't seem to manage now when the list has only a couple hundreds.
DeleteSeems with each A to Z that I have less and less energy, less and less time (which resulted in my skipping it last year) and less and less patience but I do need to apologize for only reading one of your posts. I still feel tired, if that's an excuse.
ReplyDeleteThat so resonates. I totally feel I'm never caught up with all the things I need to.
DeleteHari OM
ReplyDeleteI admire your tenacity in producing all the posts and including so many wonderful places! I enjoyed the fun of trying to come up with letter-specific words for comments on each of the blogs I did read, and that became a distinct challenge all of its own! Brava, Nilanjana - your efforts were definitely worthwhile! YAM xx
Your alphabetical comments were delightful! Thank you for being here all through April.
DeleteI also admire your dedication to A-Z. Your posts were a glorious adventure to follow. I apologize for reading and commenting in globs. I just don't seem to be on the computer as much anymore. But - kudos to your hard work and presentation.
ReplyDeleteThank you. Your support means a lot. Globs is just fine. I know what you mean exactly, about not enough time for the computer. Time management is a constant struggle and blogging, no matter how much we want to be at it, can't be top priority always.
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