Trying to find inspiration for the final blog of this series*, I turned to my Little Oxford Dictionary which my mother bought for me over 40 years ago. It has my full name, school and year written on the first page (and the price of £2.75 net), so if my maths is correct, I was given it when I started the second year in Junior school (now called Year 4).
*There won’t be another one for quite a while to be honest!
I thought I’d go to the last word in this little, well thumbed, book only to find the word is… Zygote!
Zygote (zaɪɡoʊt) n. cell formed by union of two gametes (a reproductive cell of an animal or plant).
Now, if I harper back to my Biology, I could write a blog about this, but I’m not sure I want to.
So, going to the first word listed in the ‘Z’ section, the word is: Zabaglione.
This could be a more interesting blog as a Zabaglione is an Italian dessert of whipped and heated egg yolks, sugar and wine, (click here to find out how to make it), but instead, I thought I’d explain the reasoning behind this series of blogs.
Back in late 2020, I realised that Uncle Google likes to have ‘movement’ on a website to show it’s active and not a dead site. With this in mind, I wondered what I could do to keep Uncle Google happy. As you will have gathered reading through the alphabet, writing is not really my forte, so I set myself a challenge to write a set of blogs.
Having a blank piece of paper, the mind goes into overdrive deciding what to write about and I get nowhere as overwhelm takes over, so I decided to give myself a starting point and that’s where the idea of doing the A-Z came from.
I set out to write them once a week, but the seasoned bloggers in my VA community were aghast at this thought. Not one of them thought writing a blog a week was a good idea. Who knew? I didn’t. So, with 26 blogs to write I changed it to fortnightly to become my ‘2021’ Challenge.
Now, the sharp ones that are still reading will know that 2021 has been and gone a long time ago. Yes, it has. And here I am still going. But we are now at the end. Phew.
The reasons behind the delay. Well, firstly, clients got busy, and their work came first. Then I got out of the habit and I’m sure I’m not alone, but if you don’t enjoy doing something, it either becomes a chore, or it gets left behind. Well, being a chore to start with, it soon got left by the wayside and time passed. More time passed. Even more time passed, so here we are, 3 years later and we’re finally at the letter Z.
I have learned a lot doing this challenge. I have learned that I really don’t like writing as I write how I speak, then spend aaaages tweaking, changing the text which is just a time-wasting bore in my mind.
However, when they are done and posted, it is a joy and I’m chuffed it’s done.
So, imagine how I’m feeling right now. Letter Z is done, it’s posted, and I can stop them for a while. Whoop.
“Write Blog” on my to-do list can finally be crossed out.
If you have read all 26 blogs, I thank you for your time, patience and support. It maybe (will) be sometime before I post another blog, so I can only apologise that you’ll have to wait for another masterpiece.
However, if you have something on your to-do list that you want to cross off before three years is up, as long as it’s not blog writing (I can recommend a couple of other people for that task), then click HERE to drop me a message and let’s schedule a chat.