This week’s Blogging Insights – hosted by Tanya at Salted Caramel – asks:

What can you say about your blogging experience in 2020? Has it been different from that in previous years? What have you been posting about most frequently in 2020? Please share links to a few of your favorite posts from this year.

Blogging Experience 2020

2020 has been a stressful and an anxiety-driven year. It had resulted in me quitting blogging for most of the year. Back in March, when my department announced work would be transitioning to working-from-home, no one knew it would happen in a matter of days. Then the earthquake hit on March 18 and next thing I knew, everyone was packing up their desktops, preparing their home offices, while the Walmarts and grocery stores looked like they were ransacked. I went to three different stores and they were out of toilet papers, flour, yeast, thermometers, and face masks.

Everyone, me included, thought the world was ending. I watched the movie “Contagion” and felt like that was the moment when everyone would start marching on the streets with guns and rifles. My brain and body weren’t prepared for all the apocalyptic happenings and changes around me. To describe this as being overwhelmed would be an understatement.

So I tried to calm my anxiety by stopping reading blogs, I stopped writing, stopped blogging PERIOD, and just threw myself into work because I did not want to know or care what was happening in the world. The more I knew, the more anxious I’d become. Keeping myself busy became my new motto.

Months passed. Covid cases spiked, then dipped, and just as people thought we could be back in the office, hugging each other soon, hooraying we survived this pandemic, the numbers soared to all-time highs. However, the world didn’t end. The Earth is still spinning around the sun. There are still day and night. Seasons still came.

My anxiety about the apocalypse waned before family stress took hold, which brings me to my 2020 blogging experience. 2020 has definitely been a strange one. I don’t think I ever blogged so much about my stressful life than in 2020. I don’t think my blogging experience has changed though my posts are more wordy compared to previous years because I haven’t had much opportunities to go out and take photos.

Things I posted frequently in 2020:

• Related to stress, anxiety, mental health, and emotional health
• Photo challenges (Lens-Artist Challenge and CFFC) when I feel inspired by the topic posed by the host
• Post at least two photos each week for Wordless Wednesday and Silent Sunday
• Flash Fictions (Friday Fictioneers) and Short Stories

Three favorite posts from 2020:

Letter to Self: 19 Christmas and Counting: I honestly didn’t think I was going to write this post this year because a million thoughts and ideas came and went while I was writing. My thoughts was so difficult to keep up that I almost gave up.

Lens-Artists Challenge #127: Precious Moment: That day was indeed beautiful and it yielded many wonderful photos, some of which I hope I’ll get it printed some time in 2021.

So Random: Pencil vs Mechanical Pencil: This was indeed a humorous and random post and one of my favorite.