I did it!

Day 31 of 31 at TWT!  Yay!

I did it!  I wrote on my blog every day for the whole month of March!  Since I posted some goals for the challenge on the first day, I thought I'd revisit them today and see how I did.

Goal #1 was to "make myself make time for blogging, even when I think I don't have any!"  The challenge definitely helped me do this!  I wrote in the afternoon, in the evening, and I even posted one early morning before a day trip!  I abandoned the desktop and found that using my laptop made me more eager to write because I could blog from the couch, from the bed, and even from the back patio! While I'm really glad to be able to take a day or two off now, I'm hoping the habit I've developed this month will encourage me to make time more often for blogging.

#2 was to "build stronger relationships with my Tuesday-slice friends".  I definitely did this as well!  No matter what, I tried to always read my favorite Tuesday slicers' posts, even if I didn't have time to read any others.  It was so much fun to exchange comments with them every day instead of just once a week.

In #3, I wanted to "meet new friends". I was able to do this, but not as much as I was hoping.  Just writing every day, reading my Tuesday friends' posts, and responding to people who left me comments didn't leave much time to explore as many new blogs as I had hoped.  I did develop a couple of new back-and-forth commenting relationships with new people though, and I did read various other new blogs as well.  (I wish now that I would have kept track of how many new blogs I read -- I'll have to try that next year!)

Goal #4 was to "share more glimpses of what's happening in my classroom".  While I did this a little bit, I feel I mostly sliced about my life outside of school.  Spring Break happening during the challenge was definitely a big reason for this, as I had lots of fun things to write about!  However, I didn't write much about school.  I'm hoping to start writing more about school after the challenge now that I've developed the habit of blogging more often!

#5 was to "become a better commenter by striving to give more specific compliments more often".  This was something I really focused on each time I read someone's blog, and I think I was able to do in almost every comment I left.  (I hope you enjoyed them!)

In #6, I wanted to "learn to write shorter posts".  Even though you wouldn't know it from this post (or many of my recent posts...), time constraints on some days did help me do this.  I got better at making "just a quick post" and I also split some of my larger ideas into multiple posts.

In #7, I thought I would "write about a wider variety of topics".  This definitely happened!  One fun part of the challenge was getting writing ideas from other slicers.  I still have a long list of writing topics I collected that I didn't even get to write about yet.  I also played with different formats, like "six word stories", and I even wrote a couple of poems -- something I hadn't done in a long time, other than the one I wrote on my blog at the end of last summer!

Goal #8 was to "develop a lasting habit of blogging more often".  This remains to be seen... although as I already said, I think I will blog more often now that I'm used to making time for it!

And finally, I was hoping to "be enthusiastic about writing every day!"  For the most part, this was true.  There were a few days (mostly this week) that I was getting reeeaaallllllyyy tired of "having to blog again...", but even then, as soon as I started writing, I was hooked again!  And of course, all the kind and encouraging comments continued to drive me to write!

Thanks to everyone who was read and wrote with me through this "month of Tuesdays", and congratulations on surviving the challenge!  :-)