Day 30: The Finale - Gratitude Post

(Photo credit)

This post idea is inspired by another post I read earlier today but the tone and theme are quite different. I usually believe in counting my blessings and be thankful for what we have. Alana's post inspired me to find gratitude in blogging and the challenge that I have been taking this whole month. I'll accept that it hasn't been easy. I have had to push back a bit of work to prioritise writing the post for the day. I'd rather finish it first when I sit to work rather than scramble to meet the 12 am deadline (like I did last year)

Gratitude also seems like an apt finale rather than the usual lessons-learnt-from-the-challenge post that I did last year. There are things I learnt this year too but I'll be putting them differently. No listicles. :)

First of all it feels great to achieve my first 30 on 30 in a daily challenge! And I think this is possible only when it is set as a challenge. Goals are fine but challenges really drive us. We don't want to be left behind or accept defeat. When I took the challenge last year I was deluded into thinking that writing everyday can be so easy peasy! Just continue what I did for a month! And it took me 8 days to come back for my next post in December! Once the challenge is up, there are other things that jump at us which we have deferred for too long in the favour of the completing the challenge. So yeah! We all need a challenge once in a while to best ourselves. In fact, we should change some of our goals into challenges and we'll definitely have a better shot at making it!

I really enjoyed writing this time. Mainly because I got to dip into post ideas that I have been jotting down for pretty much the entire year. And I've really wanted to write on all of them. I covered quite a few. Plus, I ensured that I found the time to research and provide resources in my posts. It did cost extra time but it definitely improves the quality of and satisfaction from writing the post.

Another thing I managed to do this time, and loved it, is hopping on to others' blogs and reading them. I've found some great blogs and since this is an international fare, I read some posts on Thanksgiving, the US election and other things that aren't relevant in my country. The #NaBloPoMo community is truly international, all of us got talking about the issues that concern us in our immediate surroundings.

So to begin with, I think the first person/people I want to thank are people behind the amazing BlogHer community. Not just for organising this whole challenge, creating the blogroll, putting up prompts and being the encouraging, engaging community that it is. But also for the prompts that they put on their blog every month for us to pick and choose what we want to write on. Getting bloggers from across the world together is quite a feat!

I am also grateful - to the writing gods, I guess - that I could be part of another challenge and actually complete it. I love writing and it has been a great experience to write and put content out there for everyone to read after the abysmal year its been for blogging here.

Also, thanks to all my readers who've stuck around through times of no content and come back when new posts arrive. Also, a special thanks to bloggers from the #NaBloPoMo community who dropped by and left their encouraging comments. I have tried to return the favour and will continue to look up more blogs to read from the Blogher Facebook page.

I still have topics in my list left. And hopefully, if the streak of motivation continues, I should manage a post or two a week. Nothing ambitious for now! :) Looking forward to you all coming back for more posts.

This post is the final post for #NaBloPoMo blogging challenge of 2016 which stands for National Blog Posting Month hosted by BlogHer every year.