Reflections on May Blog Challenge

Carlyn's thoughts

I'm really happy with doing the blogchallenge as it taught me a lot of things about myself and about Jon Bear. We both tried to be thoughtful with our answers which made the blog challenge more meaningful. I can look back on the blog posts and how it captured my thoughts and attitude for this time in my life.

When I first heard of blog challenges, I didn't think Jon Bear and I could do them. They seemed like such a lot of work and I didn't know whether I could post daily.  I learnt that I can do it but posting daily is not something that I will continue to do. I just don’t have that drive so I think I’ll stick to the regular posting that Jon and I do is which is a minimum of two posts per month but we usually do more anyway.

Jon and I shared the challenge by alternating days on which to post. He took the evens and I took the odd days. In the end, Jon Bear had to finish the challenge because something unfortunate happened where I could not continue. My dad had a heart attack last week and I have since spent the remainder of the time visiting him in hospital and making sure everything was okay at home. I want to say thank you to Jon Bear to volunteering to finish the challenge despite having a busy life himself.  Props to you Jon  Bear for being so thoughtful and generous with your time.

Lastly I want to thank to whoever made http://www.whileonthisside.com   who has since deleted all their posts. Hopefully they haven’t stop blogging for good. Anyway whoever you are thanks for creating the challenge as it brought a lot of fun and introspection.

And thank you for those that read some of our posts. 

Jon Bear's thoughts

I too had a lot of fun with the blog challenge.  Often times I'm a bit apprehensive about trying new things with our blog.  It's not as if doing a blog challenge is really stepping outside my comfort zone as much as I sometimes wonder if I will be able to give something what I feel is the proper time commitment.  Some of the blog challenge questions could have had short and quick answers.  Hopefully I was able to bring something interesting or unique to those challenges without being too wordy.  I am glad that Carlyn and I both took our time to give thoughful answers to the blog challenge questions.  I know it made it more fun for us, and hopefully it made it a little more fun for our readers.

I think my personal favorite posts were the are you lefty or righty and three things: two true one false challenges.  They were both lighthearted posts and in the post about handedness I was able to discuss briefly some background regarding handedness and prejudice.  It was a lot of fun to come up with one false thing to write about.  I did put some truth even into my false post, which was the post about my birth place.  I was born in Bayshore, Long Island, New York.  My cousin Nicole was actually born in Saudi Arabia though and my mom worked for over 40 years as a radiographer and not a radiologist.  A radiologist is the doctor who interprets the pictures taken by the radiographer as mom so nicely pointed out to me when I incorrectly mentioned she was a radiologist in the post.  Good thing it was the false post! =) My mom as a radiographer though did it long enough to be able to know what was a broken bone or emphysema, essentially she could interpret the x-rays just as well as a doctor, as such she is just as good as a radiologist to me. So there!   

My favorite posts of Carlyn's were her favorite comfort foods challenge and her 20 facts about herself challenge.  I hope to be able to try one and maybe even both of Carlyn's recipes.  I might make my mom a test subject for the salt and pepper chicken when she visits with me next week.  I thought the 20 facts challenge was witty and provided nice insight into some of Carlyn's interests.  Interestingly enough Scott Bakula also starred in my favorite Science Fiction television series of all time, Quantum Leap.  Even though the X-files is neck and neck with Quantum Leap.  I did not know that Carlyn liked to read her horoscope on a semi regular basis.  I always think that horoscopes and dream interpretation are interesting and fun things to talk about. 

I also wish to thank the creator of the blog challenge we chose to do as well as our readers for reading our blog and giving the occasional comment which we love to get.  

Carlyn, I hope your dad has a quick and full recovery, and finishing the challenge was the absolute least I could do.  I enjoyed pushing myself and thinking and writing about the last few challenges was fun .  Thank you very much for proposing we try a blog challenge.