Arizona, My Arizona

Who knew that when I decided to write about Arizona for the blogging challenge it would change not only the way I feel about my state but the way I feel about myself.  Two for the price of one.

I'll go into how I feel about Arizona in the wrap up post next week.  But I think one of the most amazing things that happened while writing this is that I lost that feeling of not feeling good enough.  I realized that I can hold my own when writing.  Am I the best writer in the world?  Not at all.  But I'm not the worst and I even feel somewhat competent.  I realized that I have my own unique voice in this blogging world and that cured my blog envy.  I'm grateful for that.  I'm now ready to forge forward with this blog and I'm excited to see where it takes me.

During the challenge a couple of things surprised me.  I knew Arizona was a big mining state.  I mean, you can't grow up here and not know that, it's part of the Arizona history you learn in school.  What I wasn't prepared for was how many of these little mining towns still survive, and even thrive, long after the mining boom left.  I wrote about four of them, but they are numerous and sprinkled throughout the state.  The biggest surprise to me was how much I wrote about the southern part of the state.  Until doing this challenge I really didn't like anything south of Phoenix except the mission.  So, imagine my surprise when seven of my subjects came from the south.  And, I want to see them all.  I think that was the most pleasant surprise, finding things about my state I didn't know and now I look forward to exploring Arizona with new eyes.

Now let me tell you where my state stacks up.  I decided to do this unofficial, totally experimental, not at all scientific research about the state of Arizona.  This was a last minute decision made as I wrote the first post.  I decided what category to put each topic in only after I had written the post.  I want you to know that I did not, in any way, fix this outcome ahead of time.  So with those disclaimers out of the way, here are the results:

Fun: 1
Interesting: 9
Amazing: 8
Quirky: 8

I cannot believe how even these results are...well, except of course for fun...more about that in a minute.  At the outset of this project I would have bet money that Quirky would have led the way...by a large margin.  But I found (or rediscovered) so many interesting and amazing things that I couldn't even write about all of them.  I have 12 subjects left that I didn't write about and those will be the next subjects for my Arizona Almanac series.

While the fun category only had one vote, I think all the things I wrote about could be fun in some way sooo...

I have decided that I live in an amazingly interesting place with just enough quirky to make it fun.  I hope you agree!

(Watch for my A to Z Challenge reflections post coming May 7th!)