#AtoZChallenge 2021 Announcement!

Hi all! Ever since 2010, the challenge of blogging from A to Z in April has been a thing. I didn’t find out about it until 2015 and then participated on my old blog with the topic of autism. I participated again successfully in 2016, this time with mental health as my theme. In 2017, I barely even started. I blame my chosen topic, which was autism again in the midst of my undergoing reassessment for it. In 2018 and 2019, I had no topic and both times didn’t finish the challenge either.

Last year, I didn’t officially have a theme, but unofficially it was self-care. I finally finished the challenge again, having decided on an only tangentially related topic for my letter X post well in advance. As one of my commenters said, you have to know your letter X word first.

Usually, the official master list for participants goes live sometime in January and there’s a designated theme reveal at the end of March for those who’ve chosen a topic. Not so this year. The theme reveal list went live last week, while the participants’ master list won’t go live until March 29. I’m not sure why this is. This did leave me with a kind of dilemma though, because I hadn’t decided on a theme and usually only decide on one at the last moment, even though I have topics running through my mind practically the entire year. Since the theme reveal sign-up will close on March 20, let’s consider this my theme reveal post.

Like I said, last year I had self-care as my unofficial topic. This year, I’m going to do a sort of similar theme. My theme is health and wellness. I intend on giving a lot of focus to aromatherapy and related topics, but to cover those letters that would otherwise be too hard, I’ll broaden my theme.

Let me say up front that I’m not an aromatherapist or alternative medicine practitioner. I am not even sure I believe in aromatherapy beyond its obvious effects of creating a nice smell. I am not a researcher or scientist and I don’t have the skills to review scientific literature, nor do I have the means to access it or the will to read it. I do find alternative medicine interesting though to learn about. That’s why I chose this as my topic. As such, please do take the health claims that aromatherapy or natural medicine make and which I may share about here, with a grain or several of salt.

Are you participating in the #AtoZChallenge this year? If you don’t know about it and are interested in signing up, check out its homepage.