Friday, May 1, 2015

Will I go back to Normal after this year's A to Zed?

As Bruce Cockburn once sang "the trouble with normal is it always gets worse".  After a month of daily blogs will I go back to 'normal' or am I changed? I hope I'm changed by everything I undertake - writing, meditating, making pasta, the whole megillah. Do you know what the whole megillah even is? Let me tell you if you don't already know - 

Definition of MEGILLAH slang:  a long involved story or account megillah Origin of MEGILLAH Yiddish megile, from Hebrew mĕgillāh scroll, volume (used especially of the Book of Esther, read aloud at the Purim celebration)
Don't you love finding out what phrases you might have heard or used mean? For years (until about seven years ago) I thought the word 'megillah' referred to something Scottish.  You know like 'MacGillah' - some crazy tribe that told long-winded stories. Well, not so far off as it happens.

Back to the present: am I changed? Yes, thank Buddha, I am changed. I'm changed because I strengthened my resolve by once again finishing something I started and not griping about it. There are actually people who sign up for this and then gripe and whine and bitch and moan. Why? Beats me. It isn't exactly hard and really if you don't do it who will know? No one, I'm thinking. But you know...people move in mysterious ways. They roll in ways I didn't even know a person could roll and well...I don't care. If folks want to sign up for something and then not do it - well fine. It is a drag to go to about fifty sites in a row to find out they signed up and didn't even do ONE post out of the whole alphabet but hey! Maybe their cat died or they lost their job, and all sense of meaning. Maybe they really are much more important than you or I and have lots of responsibilities that we cannot even dream about. I really don't care.

And there are lots of sites I'm inherently uninterested in - I don't care much about cute cats, vampires, religious rants, vehicles, American politics, etc... But I found lots that I didn't even know I cared about until I visited. It happens, for instance, that I care deeply about certain people who go to certain places and write about them - why? Because I already liked them and because they wrote interesting posts about their life in a very different place - hello Karen from Coming Down the Mountain! I also went to a site that was full of crazy math stories. Who knew I'd love that? But I did - hello   Tamara Narayan, Author -my new pal! I visited lots in Africa with the charming and dear Shirley at Shirley Corder. She described her part of the world in wonderful words and pictures and visited lots here. I met a fellow Newfoundlander (well she's on the island and I'm on the mainland but hey you can't imagine how close that feels!) named Christine at Mombie and I'm just getting to know her - we have lots in common that I don't even think she knows including a murder mystery business. I reconnected with the amazing Susan Scott at her blog The Garden of Eden. Susan wrote about dreams for the A to Zed and wow she is a lovely writer!
Everyday I visited our fearless leader -Lee - at Tossing it Out and read about all sorts of ways to blog (I'm a 'slacker blogger' but I can live with that) and l also hung out at my dear pal, Margot Kinberg from Confessions of a Mystery Novelist.  She didn't do the A to Zed but she is one of the most consistent posters and commenters ever. Her and my friend Elisabeth Spann Craig over at Mystery Writing is Murder! The two of them would be the polar opposite of slacker bloggers like me but we manage to enjoy ezch other. And my friend, my entire crit group in one crazy package, the delectable deario The Watery Tart  ( at Confessions of a Watery Tart) thrilled us with her wild flights of alliterative allegories!

And that my friend is my idea of a perfect party - some old friends, some new friends and a lot of chat!

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love looking back and seeing how a process has made me grow. Even if it's a hard process, it's a good one in that way.

Susan Scott said...

Jan, well, at the end - I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed our reconnection and learning a bit about you and your writing and the encouragement and tips and enthusiasms and the odd photograph of dogs and ice and food and friends. I've so appreciated your comments over at mine - did you read my comment back to you about dreams and thoughts?

So Buddha friend, as things always change and all is impermanent, I bid thee farewell for a while ...

AND a huge thank you for noting me in this post! This is so kind, thank you so much!

Liza said...

Glad that it was a worthwhile venture for you. I don't do it because of the stress I know I would put on myself to make sure I DID complete all the posts, but this year, I at least got an idea a topic if I decide to do it next year. Big "if" there. ;)

Jan Morrison said...

Oh Liza - I do it only because I want to connect with old pals like you! I didn't find it stressful this year but I think that is because I am not so interested in increasing my readership or anything like that - just making a few new friends and revisiting old ones.

Karen Jones Gowen said...

Aw thanks, Jan! I enjoyed your posts as well. And the Challenge was easier for me in one way in that I didn't do much visiting. Frustrating for me in that way as well since usually I like to do exactly as you did-- visit a number of blogs and make some new friends. Since I was unable to that part of it, I feel like I missed out on one of the joys of doing it. But you're so right-- too many of the links aren't participating, or many of them are of little interest to me personally. I'll go visit the ones you mention!

Trisha said...

I think the A to Z will fail to make me post more - though I do hope it will push me into commenting on more blogs again! If I can get that out of it, then I'm happy. i guess I do feel a little bit like I've been shoved out of a rut, so that's good!

Tamara Narayan said...

Thank you for the mention, new pal! It's nice to hear that non-mathy folk did enjoy the posts after all. I didn't run into too much negativity about the challenge, but when I did, I was puzzled. It's voluntary to sign up and voluntary to read those who do, so what's the problem?

I haven't posted regularly in a long while, so I hope this challenge will inspire me to keep up a bit better, but I'm like a kid who eats one food on their plates before going to the next. When I blog, I tend to do nothing else, and when I write I prefer to just write.

Shirley Corder said...

Congratulations on making it Jan! Thanks so much for mentioning me in your post. It was a great time and I hope to keep in touch with some of my new contacts. Out of Africa - Reflections on the Challenge

Melissa Sugar said...

I don't know if the challenge changed me , I'm sure it didn't miraculously cure me of my irregular blog posting schedule or better put , lack of schedule . I did reconnect with some old blogger friends and thats a plus. I discovered a few new friends, the kind I anticipate keeping in touch with. Those two factors are enough to count the challenge as a success for me. I didn't come remotely close to visiting all of the blogs. I tried in the beginning , but because I didnt prepare my post in advance , it left little time for visiting blogs. That was my fault . Lack of preparation hindered my ability to meet new people, but even with all the time in the world, I prefer visitng fewer blogs and actually reading them and interacting with the bloggers to visitng a thousand and skimming or not reading and leaving a generic comment. I also enjoyed many of the travel blogs and that surprised me because I usually skip those . Glad I didn't.
I am number 424 on the reflection post sign up list.
Melissa Sugar
@msugar13
Sugarlaw13@live.com
Http://fictiontoolbox.blogspot.com