Another year and another Challenge over. There is no doubt, that the A to Z April Blogging Challenge remains my favorite. I think it’s because of the structure, the camaraderie and the rest stops during the month. I needed them this year with the pre-Easter week working, blogging and academic assignment crunch.

April generates an incredible blogging energy with two thousand participants all plugging away to take the journey from A to Z. I find it really uplifting and motivating. Often times I had the seeds of an idea for my post on the morning of the letter, which would germinate throughout my working day, ready to flower in the evenings when I wrote my posts. I tried starting writing my posts before April but it didn’t feel the same, without that participant energy. By choosing my theme for the Challenge, I felt my posts had to bear some of my personal experience and thoughts, in short, show my authentic self. As there are days when I am plagued by doubts about my own self development and I didn’t want to bury that. So the posts worked better in real time. That was a whole lot tougher than I anticipated, even having winged some of the Challenge posts last year.

This year’s Challenge was the toughest so far. For all of that, I now have a good body of self development posts to add to my portfolio and felt I reached out to more than a few bloggers who could identify with the issues I was discussing. In a lot of ways we are not so different from each other and knowing that we all have doubts and go through periods of questioning is comforting.

As always, I met some fantastic bloggers along the way this year and became reacquainted with other bloggers I met two years ago during my first Challenge. There is some incredibly creative talent out there not to mention passion and focus. The support I received from some of my fellow Challenge bloggers in retweeting and sharing content was incredible. I have also added valued members to my blogging community and I look forward to continuing to add to their communities also.

Thank you to all of you who read, liked, commented, shared and supported. It makes a real difference to the Challenge experience and enhances it beyond measure.

A final thank you to the Challenge co-hosts and all of the Challenge assistants. Another fantastic job by Arlee Bird and the whole team, with this year seeing the introduction of the #AtoZChat on Twitter – a great way to get to know Challenge participants ahead of time.