Z is for zonked

Yeh kahaaaaaaaannnnnn aa gaye hum.... 

To the end of the A-Z marathon 2016!

I'm zonked out all right.

And as I wrap up for the month, a few thoughts crop up in my head.

• Yaaaahooooooo it's over! :D

• Oh no, it's over... :(

• Why is it that I can effortlessly (well, most of the time) write 26 posts in a month, and yet I struggle to write like 26 more in the remaining 11 months? That is a seriously sad statistic.

• My search history this month is full of 'words that start with...'

• This is my third year doing the A-Z marathon. Compared to the last two years, I definitely had fewer panic attacks this time. However, it was not like I breezed through all the letters. At times, I'd be cutting it too close. (In my world, cutting it too close means sitting at the comp at 10 am and not knowing what to write for the day.)

• My sis-in-law keeps pointing out how unfair it is that I have a great source of posts in Xena, and so such blogathons are so easy for me. I won't deny that. A lot of the posts are indeed outsourced to Xena. So I have advised my sis-in-law to promptly make arrangements for procuring a child. (This has to be the best reason to have a kid, yeah? The A-Z blog marathon.)

• At times, panic-inducing (and rather embarrassing) questions would pop up in my head in the middle of the night, such as "Errr... did I write W today? Wait, W does come after V right? Riiiiight????"

• There were times when I would be out of ideas and would go through all possible words starting with a particular letter. Take 'T for transformer', for example. However, I had nothing beyond the title. I have a picture of Xena with her transformer, but I possibly couldn't write a post that went, "This is my kid. She is playing with her transformer. It is not a doll dressed in pink. The sight of this makes me happy. Kthxbai." Or when I thought of 'P for pani puri', the post would have been something like this. "I love pani puri. As I've mentioned 83984739875 times on my blog. Kthxbai." 

• The list of posts that never got written is rather long. Some are just heart-breaking. Sample this. There was a pigeon's nest right outside Xena's bathroom window, but it was too out of the way for her to see it. So I used to climb on a stool, extend my hand out of the window, reach as far as I could with my phone and take daily photos of the nest to show Xena. I photographed the nest over months, from the time it was being built to the time two little eggs popped up to the time they hatched and two little pigeon chicks made their appearance. I observed them getting fed by their parents, growing, huddling when it rained, hopping out of the nest closer and closer to the ledge but not really having the courage to take the plunge. It was the sweetest little project Xena and I were doing together, and I thought once the chicks flew away, maybe I'd write a photo post - 'P for pigeon' or 'N for nest'. However, tragedy struck. Another pigeon couple wanted to take over the nest and viciously attacked the chicks, until they were bleeding from their heads. The parents tried to defend the chicks for a while, but soon, they gave up. It was horrible. I would spray water to make the attackers go away, but when I'd come back from Xena's school, I'd see fresh injuries. One day, the smaller chick simply disappeared. I try to tell myself that it flew away, but deep in my heart, I know it wasn't ready. It was probably pushed off. A few days later, the other chick disappeared too. I was so put off by the whole thing I decided not to do the photo post. How on earth do you end a post like that?

• I hope readers will forgive the (sometimes horrendous) typos and mistakes in several of the posts. I can't even blame autocorrect. It's me. Sometimes, my thoughts tumble out of my head onto my keyboard so rapidly that there simply isn't enough bandwidth for pausing and reading. And after you've written a Mahabharata of a post, its sheer length is so daunting that proofreading goes out of the window. 

• Of course, I had the usual doubts about some of the posts. Gosh, I'm gonna get mega-judged for this post. Gosh, does this photo post have too many photos? Gosh, is the quiz too easy? Gosh, what if everyone hates Fan and never ever trusts my reviews? Was I objective enough or did I let my love for SRK get the better of me? (I suspect it's the latter.) 

• But then there were also instances when after I typed something out, my head felt clearer. I was very impressed by the Konmari book all right, but only after writing the K post, the motivation to Konmari the heck out of my place really shot up. Similarly, after writing the O post where I talked about how I want to judge less and rant less about ranters, I feel myself making a conscious move towards achieving these goals. 

Thank you, bewdas and bewdis, for being there with me again this year. I have finished replying to all your emails, and over the next few days, will be replying to all the comments on the posts. And after that, I (and the bar) will go into deep hibernation.

Only for a while, I hope.

Kthxbai.