Zainab Looks Back

In my life, never has a time been simultaneously full of joy and frustration, hope and helplessness, action and inaction.

As an A-Z newbie, I found the whole event amazing. How thrilling, I thought, to be churning out post after post in an alphabetical order and how come I haven't heard of it before?  Almost every waking moment was spent thinking up topics to post about, people were actually reading and commenting, and it was fun.

Well, not all of it were sunshine and smiles. There were times I wanted to smash the keyboard and give up on the challenge. There were days I wanted to sit and cry because nothing seemed to inspire me. Towards the end of the month, I couldn't concentrate at all because my teeth were extracted and everything hurt. (Read about it here.)

But leaving the challenge incomplete felt as sinful as starting a collection of all books in a series and then abandoning it halfway through. I soldiered on, aided by the virtual presences of some fabulous bloggers. Here's a shout out to:

Julia Chiang (A Dose of Jules), poet and photographer extraordinaire, who bravely combined two challenges - A-Z and NaPoWriMo - and completed them gracefully. No dose of her poetry will ever be too much.

Sania Heba's lovely blog, Embracing Dawn, brims with some of the most insightful and beautiful poems. Embracing a blog so wholeheartedly has never been easier than this.

I would have never journeyed through Iraq and savoured its sights, sounds and smells, if it wasn't for Ghadeer at Spill beans. I loved drawing parallels between Iraqi and Indian cultures. Also, the blog has the best background ever. No arguments.

A hug to Kristen Dyrr who, despite me forgetting to comment on several of her witty musings, always found time to brighten my day with a few words.

Fida Islaih, whose wonderful poetic asides I wish I'd read earlier on in the challenge. I promise I'll dig through your works extensively and comment on them. Very soon.

And to everyone else who visited/read/commented, thank you. I could never have done it without you.

April 2013 will go down in my memory as a month of discovery... I just hope I'll be around to make it to the next edition of Blogging from A to Z Challenge.

Signing off with a mixture of sadness and relief,
Zainab.

P.S. Which post of mine did you like the most? Just curious...