Monday 10 March 2014

A note after blog month..




So after the self imposed challenge of writing a post everyday for a month, what exactly has it done for me?

Well, firstly I had no clue this is not a completely new idea which I came up with all by myself. I don’t mind admitting I am secretly a bit gutted about this, but onwards and upwards. Believe it or not people have written books of a month’s worth of blog post ideas.

Wordpress even conducted their own month blog challenge in January, although I would never have been organised enough to start merrily posting as of new years day. So, I didn’t invent this challenge and basically everybody’s doing it and I can totally see why. 

After attending ‘blog school’ and having a makeover from my fairy blogmother, Greg Thorpe (who’s very good blog is here!), I started February with a shiny new blog. However, this has now left me with a dormant wordpress blog that VERY confusingly is still getting readers - proof there are people out there that will sign up to anything, even dead blogs. All is not lost though as I have now become greedy. I have two blogs, so why not write two? Yes that’s right, I will be going back to the drawing board and reviving wordpress soon, so watch this space. 

I conducted product reviews, book reviews and commented on current affairs and a variety of charitable causes. I also conducted recipe tests, including drinking coffee filled with melted butter, which I hope demonstrates some of the lengths I will go to in the name of some good, or failing good amusing, reading. 

It was tough, there were days where I absolutely confess to pulling posts out of my backside and virtually every one was written on the day of publication, usually in the evening, still with a sink of washing up weighing on my mind. At no point did I succeed in creating a store of articles, I had planned to write a week’s worth in a day. That didn’t happen. However, in the month of February my entire household endured sickness that required both my children to stay off nursery for a week. We even had to cancel youngest’s birthday party for fear of infecting our friends. I’d already bought enough multicoloured fondant icing to successfully grout a bathroom, but with no birthday cake to create, it continues to gather dust in a corner.

After the wettest winter on record causing countless families to lose their homes and livelihoods, it pains me greatly to also cite a minor flood as another potential game ender for me in blog month. Especially as it was my fault, having over zealously yanked the drainage pipe of my washing machine whilst cleaning the filter. However, it was bad enough for me to curse myself for committing to daily blogging with no washing machine and a utility room that now needs to be re-floored.

Yet when the 28th February finally came, I felt there was a blog shaped void in my life. I loved doing it and in this last week I have missed it. I entered every new project and outing with vigour and interest. I became shallow, rating everything as only worth doing if it was blog worthy. I attended several restaurants (yes ok, I have small children, I went to one solitary restaurant) and photographed my food, the table settings, even the toilets, whilst making notes on my phone, after rubber necking another table’s food, about how I wished I’d had the lobster bisque starter purely for the mini silver soup terrine it was served in. This restaurant review didn’t make the cut. Jay Rayner had already done it and was far more sensible, not to mention  well informed, about the origins of the food and he didn’t get caught up in details like the texture of the paper towels in the ladies. In fact I doubt it would have crossed his mind to include a photo from inside the toilet cubicles (still curious? Read his review here). 

While I am pleased I never used anything like THIS. Which is only because I just don’t think anyone would find the contents of my fridge interesting (rotting humous anyone?) nor did I read any books like this one - CLICK HERE. I am now such an expert I will be writing one in direct competition to this, not really. 

Of course now I’ve done it there are blog challenges popping up every bloody month including this one: http://ultimateblogchallenge.com which starts in April, and where does this leave me? Undecided. For now. 

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