Reflecting on the 2013 A to Z Challenge

By Timothy Valentine
[CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

I am wiped out, y'all.

This A to Z, my second turn at it, I volunteered to be a helper/minion/ninja for one of the co-hosts. I had only two distinct tasks, one involving promotion, the other regarding following up on various bloggers to see if they consistently stuck with the A to Z program (and reporting for deletion those who didn't). I feel like I didn't do my best with this. In fact, I know I could've done better.

April was a weird month for me. The day job continued to use me, sometimes brutally, and then...well, I got caught up in this thing about a guy. (There's always a guy.) I was distracted. OK, I allowed myself to be distracted. It seemed impossible for me not to be distracted. (Hell, even though this heart-throbby business has come to its inevitable end, I'm still bloody distracted!)

Which is all to say, I wish I'd followed through better on my help-y/minion-y/ninja-y responsibilities.

I also had less patience/head-space for commenting on blog posts. Sure, I scanned way more than five links per day, sometimes averaging twenty links a night, but I just couldn't concentrate well enough to comment intelligently. I feel this to be another failure, on my part—I definitely exerted myself more last year. To be fair to myself, I didn't have the additional duties then that I had this year (nor the emotional nonsense). But whatevs; it was making connections w/other bloggers which most excited me about the Challenge, and my level of engagement was sorely lacking. Mea culpa.

Finally, I feel I must be true to myself and voice one criticism about this year's Challenge. Specifically, I thought the practice of requiring participating bloggers with adult content to code themselves with the AC tag, while other bloggers were free to code themselves or not, was inequitable.

For the sake of clarity: I absolutely agree that blogs with adult content should identify themselves as such, especially those involved in the A to Z Challenge, for all the reasons given by the A to Z Co-Hosts. I have my standard warning up through Blogger anyway, so I readily tagged myself with the AC code on the linky-list. I also agree that folks who didn't self-identify as hosting adult content material should be removed from the list.

What I don't agree with is that AC bloggers were the only participants for whom the coding was mandatory. Some folks wrote that they wouldn't be coding their links because they didn't want to be "boxed-in" or pigeon-holed. Well, that's essentially what the mandatory coding did to bloggers with adult content, and to them only, since no other bloggers were under the restriction of coding their blogs. I truly feel the coding should be required of all bloggers participating in the challenge, to insure an even-handed experience, with equal opportunities for exposure, for all A to Z participants.

That aside, I congratulate every A to Z-er who stuck with the Challenge to the bitter end. I aim to pop in on folks from the linky-list whose blogs I've not yet visited during the remainder of 2013. Folks whom I regularly visit when not in A to Z mode: I'm sorry I didn't make it around to you in April. I'll do my best to atone for it in the coming months.

God bless and God speed, y'all. And, you know, I'm not above requesting prayers/good thoughts/chocolate for some help in getting over my heartache and focusing on my personal goals for the rest of 2013, specifically, going the indie publishing route and reconnecting with my music.