Feeling Cursed

The human brain tends to remember the negative experiences of life. I'm pretty sure it's an evolutionary trait that helped us survive by reminding us of things, places, activities, etc that put us in unhealthy or dangerous situations. It's a good idea that, at least in my case, has gone awry. It acts with an intensity that can be paralyzing.

The negatives cling to me like parasites and leave little to no room for positives. I have a terrible time finding the positives and, when I do, keeping the positives in mind is just as hard. It adds up to feeling like I'm cursed. The extent of that cursed feeling waxes and wanes with my moods. Recognizing that correlation to my mood has been helpful in the sense that I'm better equipped to wait out the feeling but it does nothing the reduce the pain, anxiety, and sense of helplessness that comes along with it. Family and friends criticize me for being pessimistic or defeatist. Saying things like, "It could be worse," is not helpful. I continue to feel what I feel and a certain guilt for feeling that way is added to the emotional burden I already carry.

The other day, a valuable lesson I learned in a class I took a million years ago popped into my head. The context of the original lesson was completely different from my current situation so I never thought to use it in my battle against my curse before. The mind is resilient but that characteristic must be nurtured, it must be fed. Feeding it a diet primarily consisting of negatives kills it. It must be given plenty of positives. One positive for each negative is insufficient, though. It makes for a malnourished resiliency, one that's sick and leaves a person at risk of giving up. Because of this and the fact that critiquing each other was a significant part of the class, the teacher established an important rule. Before someone could offer up a criticism, they had to provide three compliments.

This provided me with a technique, a new weapon to wield against the darkness. I am forcing myself to find at least two positives that are directly related to the negative situation feeding the cursed feeling. A recent example is when the transmission went out on my vehicle. Positive 1) The vehicle rolled to a stop in a location safe from traffic and from being impounded. Positive 2) Someone near and dear to me was willing and able to tow it to the shop for me.

My curse is a little more intense than that. It involves a large number of things going wrong all in a small window of time. The transmission was just one of them. Looking at each problem, each thing that's gone wrong, and finding a couple of elements in each situation that worked to my advantage is time consuming. Hopefully it will be worth time.

Checking on my Comfort Zone

Recently, a friend introduced me to a site called Superbetter. It's all about making yourself better - more resilient, more optimistic, more motivated. It's filled with games but not like flash games or xbox games. These are quests and you face challenges, gain allies, learn skills, and fight off bad guys. It intrigued me and, since my friend signed up for it, I figured I would sign up, too. I don't play everyday. Honestly, I haven't been to the website in weeks.

While working through my quest I got stuck. It's my own fault, too. I was faced with a challenge and didn't do it. I haven't done it yet. I started to but it was uncomfortable so I set it aside with the intention of returning to it the next day. I did return to it but I didn't do anything about it beyond rereading the description of what I was supposed to do. What did I get stuck on, you ask? It's silly, really. All I needed to do was write a journal entry answering this question:

What is your current relationship with your comfort zone?

Fortressed within it?

Always busting through it?

See what I mean? It's simple. Yet, it's so complex. Formulating a reply has been troublesome and it's been weighing on me.

Source: Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

My comfort zone is always changing. It varies with my mood - how manic or depressed I am or if I'm neither. My level of anxiety plays a big role in defining what I enjoy doing or what I'm willing to try. Likewise it determines what completely freaks me out, it draws that proverbial line in the sand which I cannot cross. What feels impossible for me one week is second nature the next and vice versa.

Source: Clinical Junior.com

My healthy self, if I know my healthy self - which is dubious, is bound to be somewhere in the middle between manic and depressed. That's only logical. She must be more cautious than the manic version of me and must also be more relaxed than the anxious version of me. Surely she is, or at least believes herself to be, more capable than the depressed version of me.

So, today? At this moment? I feel good about myself. I believe I'm good at my job and I enjoy it. I feel good about my relationships with family and friends. Calling my best friend is not a stretch today even though the same activity yesterday was distressing and I couldn't bring myself to do it. I feel like I have something worth sharing on my blog and I'm able to adequately answer the Superbetter question.

Will I feel the same tomorrow? Who knows.

If you're curious, here's a little about Superbetter from TED Talks.

Don't Judge Me (POSSIBLE TRIGGER WARNING)

NOTICE: This post may be a trigger for you.

I think I manage the anxiety I experience rather well. Most days I can keep my darker emotions from ganging up on me and I've done a great job of successfully beating them off. There is a certain threshold, though. Somber turns to despair and I feel defeated, crushed beneath the weight of my own sick brain. Grumpy morphs into a full blown rage and the catalyst will be something ridiculous. Discomfort becomes humiliation and shame as my brain brings to the forefront of my conscious mind everything it believes I've ever done wrong. What happens beyond the threshold is not anything I'm proud of.

I scratch and cut myself. It makes sense to me in the moment. I've done it enough throughout my life that I no longer carry sharp things with me when I feel the stable ground beneath me tremble, a sign that a terrible fissure threatens to open under my feet. Leaving the pocket knife at home interferes with my attempts to cut myself. Most of the time, the appeal of cutting fades away before I can gain possession of an object capable of drawing blood. Sometimes cutting is so terribly seductive that, unable to access anything sharper, I resort to using my fingernails. They don't cut per se; they scratch well, though. They become claws that scrape at the skin of my thighs in moments of desperation.

I don't know if it's seeing the stripes or feeling the sting that helps me keep my demons at bay. I guess it's both. I make more cuts and scratches when my distress is more intense. The more my efforts fail to ease my anguish, the more ferocious my actions become. The physical pain is probably the larger part of it although the blushing lines swelling on my skin do create an odd feeling of satisfaction - gratification blended with disgrace.

Don't judge me for this behavior. I know it's messed up. I don't need to be reminded. I don't even want to talk about it most of the time because the people I confide in almost always focus on the action and make me feel even more ashamed which isn't helpful. The problem isn't the cutting or the scratching. They are symptoms, physical manifestations of the dark hurt and anxiety that have escalated beyond my ability to fend off in a manner deemed healthy by the normal people of the world. Let's deal with the emotions I can't handle and the scratching will go away.

Don't judge me for this behavior. Other peoples' actions are mesed up, too. Making an 11:00pm run to the stop-and-rob for a cheap six-pack of beer because you can't slow down your mind enough to go to sleep is damaging to the body, too. It's just not exposed. Is harming your liver somehow more nobel than injuring your skin? I'm not even referring to alcoholism, just the occassional "had a rough day" gin and tonic. What about smoking when stressed? Over-eating? Going on spending sprees? All of these have consequences.

Don't judge me for this behavior. We all have our coping methods and mine usually heal within a few days.

You Understand? Really?

My friend expressed some concern about me not long ago. She is a newish friend and does not yet know much about having a bipolar brain. She knows even less about my particular brain and the life experiences it initiated and stored in its memory.

"You're not quite yourself today. Is everything okay?"

"Yeah. I'm just in a funky place right now."

It's a good answer. Most people accept it easily and we move on. More importantly, I avoid thinking at a level which would prompt tears or temper. My friend, however, didn't like it. She pressed the issue. I don't remember the exact string of questions or my answers but I kept trying to politely and nonchalantly redirect the conversation. The only way to make her interrogation stop was to be direct and probably rude.

"Look, there's nothing wrong in the world around me. My bipolar head is just screwing with me. It's illogical, it happens, and I'll be fine."

What else could I possibly say? The 15 minutes we had together before going to work was not enough time to explain the meaningless anxiety churning in my gut or the darkness I was walking into. I didn't really want to explain anyway. I wasn't ready to share the very personal, raw details she was trying to elicit and her aggressive, albeit well-intended, poking for information has made me less inclined to share in the future.

Then she said, "I understand." The conversation could have, should have, ended there but I laughed and shook my head. It was a knee-jerk reaction and it was stupid.

We pulled into the parking lot at work. "Really. I understand."

Northern Goshawk

My mind commenced to spinning as a result of her audacity. Thoughts. Feelings. Images of "understanding" eyes full of pity. Memories of "understanding" voices telling me to suck it up. It all moved through me so fast that the only knee-jerk reaction I had was stunned silence and the inability to move. Long moments passed.

I scoffed and stepped out of the car. As we walked into the building we work in she continued looking at me. Her eyes oozed just how pathetic I was to her. She looked at me like I was a sad, little, wounded sparrow even though I felt much more like a Goshawk whose territory had just been invaded.

Those not initiated into the pain, euphoria, confusion, and chaos that bipolar disorder gifts to the fortunate sick and the people who love them do not understand.

Spiritual Abuse - Atheist Style

I was reading a blog about spiritual abuse called "Led2Truth" recently. It struck a terrible nerve in me and sent me on a little research journey. It prompted a little soul searching, too.

Most people, surely, can relate stories of bad experiences in one church or another. I certainly have a few but I've come to terms with them. I've grown up, made my spiritual decisions, and I'm content with them. Why, then, did this blog about church experiences hit so hard? I'm prone to empathizing, easily taking on the emotions of the people around me whether they are physically with me, on-line, in print, or on television. It's rather annoying sometimes. This was different somehow. The posts triggered something from my own past.

When I found this site http://www.micsem.org/pubs/counselor/frames/spiritabuse.htm and this list, I understood.

Point #1. "Abusive church leaders in abusive churches are into power and control. Enroth writes, "The spiritual autocrat, the religious dictator, attempts to compel subordination ... [and] dominate-submissive relationships."

• My experience with this sort of abuse was not at the hands of Christian church leaders. It was at the hands of an atheist, an atheist I trusted, and I didn't recognize it for many years. The Atheist did an amazing amount of damage to me before I caught on. I'm horrified that I could be so blind and still feel guilty from time to time.

Point #2. Abusive church leaders in abusive churches are into dichotomous thinking. With them everything is black-white, either-or, this-that, us-them. Dichotomous thinking is generally expressed in overt or implied terms such as "we the true followers of Jesus" versus those others "who are not as spiritual as we are." Of course, dichotomous abusive church leaders are the judge and jury on who is or who is not spiritual, who is or who is not fully walking with Jesus.

• Same atheist. Comments I made, discussion we had, often ended with him being right and me being ignorant. He pitied me and explained that I was still under the control of a religion I no longer claimed to be part of. Scientists, which we were both trained to be, did not believe in any sort of higher power. If they did then they were not true scientists. Over time these discussion eroded my sense of self. Without a solid core of who I was, I relied on him for my opinions.

Point #3. Abusive church leaders in abusive churches are into legalistic perfectionism and perfectionist legalism. Again, legalisms are not about holiness; they are about power and control....

• Apparently atheists can fall into this trap, too. Rigid adherence to particular secular philosophies is just as damaging as doing so with spiritual ideas. His philosophies were right and mine were wrong. My views were explained away and after a while I started to believe the explanations. Certain traditions were done away with in his secular legalism. Do I bow my head, at least out of respect, with the rest of my family when my father says grace over Thanksgiving dinner?

Point #4. Abusive church leaders in abusive churches have a tendency towards isolationism. Some of this isolationism may be more social than physical. Abusive groups will not mix with the impure or with the unholy....

• We hung out with a particular crowd and had a rather elitist attitude. I didn't realize it at the time but we did isolate ourselves from certain people and certain world views. I'm ashamed to admit that I went so far as to cut long-time friends from my life because The Atheist did not approve.

Point #5. Abusive church leaders in abusive churches are obsessed with discipline and even excommunication. In some abusive Christian circles, to question the church leader(s) means questioning God Himself. Abusive Christians are so certain that they are right and that they have the mind of Christ that they can be extremely punitive if they are not obeyed.

• This one may not apply exactly. The Atheist never hit me or yelled me, if that's what is meant by punitive. He did shame me, though. If I didn't see things his way then I was just not as intelligent as he was. I was less mature, more like a child than an adult. Maybe my character had not fully developed yet? Truth be told, my character was dissolving away and I was less and less capable of trusting myself. 

Point #6. Abusive church leaders in abusive churches discourage church members' having contacts with people outside the fellowship, including family members. Obviously, church leaders that tell young people "Do not listen to your parents, listen only to us" should be suspected.

• Check. The Atheist did this, too. We didn't use the word "fellowship," of course. My contact was limited to certain people, people we considered friends. Family was definitely left out of the loop on many things. I saw them on a pretty regular basis, but some topics were not to be talked about. Their side of topics were explained into nothingness as coming from weak-minded, closed-minded, or uneducated people. 

Point #7. Abusive church leaders in abusive churches install surveillance systems (read "pastoral care") within their fellowships. Of course, for abusive church leaders a surveillance system is all about a spiritual concern regarding people's souls and how to best pastorally and brotherly look after the sheep of the flock. However, these surveillance systems go way beyond pastoral care. They are about power and control.

• Towards the end of our relationship this sort of behavior started. I was thoroughly cut off from any of the people who could have helped me see what was happening. The people who were in my life, fit squarely within The Atheists view of what life should be like and gladly reinforced his opinions when he was not around.

I get it. Now I understand why her blog bothers me so much. My relationship with The Atheist lasted for years and years. When certain traumatic events were occurring, my mind was so shocked that I finally saw some of the truth of our life. I weighed less than 100 pounds and my personality had disintegrated so much that I thought it would turn to dust. If it died so did I and I was well on my way.

A Little Politics

U.S. Politics

The link to keep up with news from the White House

http://www.whitehouse.gov/

The link to keep up with news from the U.S. Senate

http://www.senate.gov/

The link to keep up with news from the U.S. House of Representatives

http://www.house.gov/

Texas Politics

The link to keep up with the Texas Legislature

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/

I hate politics. It's stressful and I hate the way stress feels in my body. Anxiety takes hold and doesn't let go for the longest time. In the meantime, I tremble, feel sick, can't quite think straight. In short, I feel like a bumbling idiot. I know I am smart, well-educated, usually well-spoken, but when stress starts to speak for me I come across as possessing everything except those characteristics.

Understanding the political process from an academic perspective is hard enough. Throw in the human element - all those people with their goals, values, and unique personalities - and voila! You have yourself a tangled pot of spaghetti akin to that found in Strega Nona.

Anxiety Strikes Again

I hate it. Straight up. I hate anxiety.

I appreciate that it is hardwired into the human creature. We need it for survival. It warns us of potential danger and primes us to fight or to flee. I get it. When it works properly, triggered at appropriate times, it's great. But then there are the other times....

Getting a lump in your throat because you need to walk down the street to get the mail sucks. It makes no sense. The walk is only a single block and the neighborhood is safe so going to the mailbox should be a nice, leisurely stroll. Instead, I'm driven to keep a close eye on everything around me and my entire body is pressuring me to hurry up and get back home, back to safety. Logically, I know this is unreasonable, unwarranted, and I feel a little embarrassed but I can't help myself. I want to return to a state of comfort.

In the not-so-distant past I thought I was having heart problems and went to a cardiologist about it. A series of tests revealed my heart was just fine. If the problem wasn't with my heart, then what the heck was going on? I'm a little dense I guess because it took me a while to decide I was having stress related anxiety problems. Maybe I was just in denial. The stress in my life at that point was unreal. At times I could barely do my job because my hands would go numb and my fingers would curl up. Other times I could feel and hear the blood whooshing through my ears with each beat of my heart.

I was light-headed and got dizzy if I stood up too fast but I chalked that up to poor eating habits. Skipping lunch was the norm. My workload was just too heavy to stop for something like lunch. It was a bad idea and I knew it but I did it anyway. I didn't have a choice. Well, technically I did and as far as my employer was concerned they were not pressuring me - I was deciding to work straight through my lunch time. It was terrible. In hindsight it was just flat stupid.

The real doozy was my hair falling out. At first it seemed normal - like the little bit of hair that gets tangled in your brush over time. After a while it was a quite different. Rinsing the shampoo and conditioner out of my hair left hair tangled in among my fingers. It just slid right out of the rest of my hair. I thought for sure I would go bald.

I am really glad that many of the symptoms I experienced then are not happening now. I still have anxiety issues on a daily basis but I'm keeping my hair.

Coffee Bites

Waking up late this morning meant I had a raging headache. Since I’m typically up and moving by 6:45am, I’m typically drinking my first cup of coffee by 6:46am. Don’t talk to me until I’ve had a cup of coffee in the morning. I refill my rather large coffee mug 2 or 3 times during the 45 minutes I’m getting ready for the day and then one more time before I climb into my car.

Yep. I have a caffeine problem. I’ve gotten better, though. The coffee pot at work used to be 10 steps away from me and I refilled my mug all day long. It was so easy to do and, come lunch time, I didn’t feel hungry. The lack of hunger pains was a good thing, in a way. My work load was excessive and I worked right through lunch because I felt like it was the only way I could possibly complete everything that was expected of me. Fortunately, the coffee pot is much further from me these days. Unfortunately, my work load is still ridiculous.

I’m a spoon-full-of-sugar-in-my-coffee person. In an attempt to wean myself off of so much coffee I’ve been skipping on the sugar. It worked for a little while; I drank 1 or 2 cups while getting ready and didn’t finish the cup I took with me. I’m developing a taste for unsweetened coffee now, so my brilliant strategy isn’t so brilliant any more.

More recently I made a trip to Goodwill with my over-sized mugs. I’m drinking out of little mugs, the little white ones frequently found at pancake houses. The idea is to drink the same number of cups and since the cups are smaller I’ll drink a smaller volume of coffee. It’s totally psychological. It’s working, though. I can’t finish an over-sized cup of coffee anymore. It get cold, that nasty room temperature, before I can finish it which is strong motivation to not drink so much.

I’m still getting headaches if I don’t get to my coffee early enough in the morning. Clearly, I still have a caffeine addiction.

A New Challenge and Meditation

New goal: I’m going to write 500 words each day for the rest of May. Hopefully I’ll be successful with this personal challenge. I didn’t quite make it for the Blogging from A to Z in April Challenge, although I am going to finish it. I’m almost done - I’m down to X and K. I didn't do well in the NaPoWriMo challenge at all. Poetry is hard for me. All in all, I am proud of the poetry I wrote, I just didn't write a poem each day. I didn’t even get close to the 30 poems goal. I’m thinking I can be more successful with a challenge that is a little more flexible.

I’ve decided that I’m going to participate in a meditation group that is starting up soon. It’s structured to be more along the lines of shamanism than Buddhism. Buddhism is about clearing your mind (right?) and that is something I am simply incapable of doing. Some people disagree but they are not able to crawl inside my brain to experience, first hand, what my brain and thoughts are like. I’m not a Shaman in any way, shape, or form, but shamanism is more suited to the workings of my mind. It allows, even encourages, the thoughts, feelings, and images that arise during a meditation. They are part of who I am and, if I can avoid directing them or filtering them, they can help me understand myself and come to terms with all aspects of myself.

Thoughts, images, and feelings pop into my head all the time. I keep myself busy as a way of managing all the popping – it’s annoying at best. Horror movies and other graphic media are anathema to me. They foster thoughts that make me feel afraid and anxious. Certain places and activities do the same thing. Worry washes over me and I cannot enjoy myself. I won’t make a list in case your brain works like mine and the list itself will create feelings of anxiety.

The meditation group will have time for journaling, an activity I enjoy profusely. It’s helpful in the moment and interesting to look back on later. I can see where I have grown, where I have stagnated, and where I have withered. My journal is like a good friend complimenting me on the good things I’ve done and willing to smack me in the face for the things I messed up.

The last feature of this particular group is that we will have time to discuss our experiences. What helped us meditate? Hindered us? What did we experience during the meditation and what might it be revealing about ourselves? A great deal of trust will be involved because not all experiences are about unicorns and rainbows. They aren’t all beautiful because we are not perfect. The meditations will certainly reveal those things that I don’t like in myself and in my past. Sharing some of those things will be difficult. I don’t know yet if already knowing someone will make sharing easier. I’ll find out soon enough.

Lines for a Fortune Cookie for NaPoWriMo Day 21

The next time you feel down, someone will tell you to pick yourself back up and get over it.

You will "like" a Facebook page dedicated to mental illness advocacy and education.

Choose your words carefully. Stigma bites and it might come back and bite you.

An important message is waiting for you at http://www.bringchange2mind.org/

Someone close to you has a mental illness. They're just not saying so.

Stress is wearing you down. Slow down before you hurt yourself.

Talk to someone. You need to share and they need to hear.

Are you really OCD? Or do you just like saying that?

You will soon meet someone with depression.

Participate in your local NAMIWalk.

Sing. It's good for you.

Recovery is possible.

Are you crazy?

Meditate.

Just breathe.

Take one step at a time.

Your insurance will cover it.

Imagine your world if she wasn't sick.

Try listening to understand rather than to respond.

Good things will come to you if you follow this blog. ;)

You are the 1 in the 1 in 10 that will experience depression.

Your bad attitude is the reason people with mental illnesses don't seek help.

Every criminal is not mentally ill and every mentally ill person is not a criminal.

Suicide is not funny. Tell that to the next person you hear make a joke about it.

Remember to tell them you love them. Every day.

R is for Reflection

These are few of the images some high school students created as part of an artsy lesson on symmetry. Every picture is different as each one is made from the letters of that person's name. They used the letters in their name to form a kind of code that told them where to graph and where to dray the lines. In choosing colors, they only had to make sure that each sections' neighbors were of a different color.

What does this have to do with mental illness? Well, much like we experience mental illness, these pictures are all expressions of symmetry. Yet each person's experience with mental illness is unique, just as these small works of art are unique.

Artwork created by my students (c)1913

Many of the kids got part way into the activity and started complaining that their picture was ugly, that they wished their name made something pretty like that person's over there. Mine's too simple, it's boring. Mine's too complicated. I don't know how to color it.

I had to do some poking and prodding to get them to move on, to keep working to the finished product. They are beautiful, aren't they?

The activity got me thinking about how often we wish our lives were different. What if our lives were more like that person's life over there. How often we think our own lives are not pretty or are not worth working on. My life is so boring. My life is so complicated.

We can only work with what we're given, just like these kids did. At the risk of sounding cliche, I think we can create something beautiful, balanced, and worth sharing with others if just keep taking that next step.

M is for Music

I think it's funny how often science lags behind the things that people already know. Did we really need a scientist to tell us that music helps us manage stress?

I have music that I like to play when I'm angry - something loud with drums and guitars that seems to growl.

I have dance music, romantic music, sleepy relaxing music. I have music that helps me keep an up-beat attitude and other music that, whether I like it or not, moves me to tears.

I play Patty Griffin's "Heavenly Day" when I need to be reminded that things are going to be okay. It's one of my favorite songs and has been for a number of years.


I'm sure there's more to the study than proving that music affects people's moods and can be used to help regulate moods. Considering that people have essentially been using music to self-medicate for as long as humans have existed, all I can say to this is, "Well, duh."

Like I said, there's more to the study. Here's the link to the article I read and it contains a link to the study for those of you who want to check out the other elements of the study. http://io9.com/can-music-be-more-effective-than-drugs-465249779

C is for Crazy

Wordle is just too much fun. You enter a bunch of text into the box on their website and then they create an instant picture with all the words. All sorts of formatting options are available - format, font, color, etc. The smallest words show up least frequently and the largest words show up most frequently. I went to thesaurus dot com and looked up crazy and then posted all the antonyms into the Wordle program. My choice of words was motivated by an attempt to figure out some language to use when talking about mental illness. Rather than indicating what we don't what people to say, I wanted to get some ideas for what we do want people to say. I'm not sure what I expected to see. Here's the image it created....

I'm rather irritated by the results. Are people without mental illnesses the only ones that can be sensible? or reasonable? People with mental illnesses cannot be rational or balanced or smart? Really?

Changing the language that we use is important. I think it's time that we advocates change our choice of words, too. Nature abhors a vacuum. Taking words out of people's concept of mental illness leaves a gap that must be filled. What are we going to fill that space with?

For more information about the 2013 Blogging from A to Z Challenge see the website of the same name.

A is for Ativan

is for Ativan and Ativan is for anxiety. Anxiety is awful!

I know everyone experiences anxiety - it's part of the human condition. A certain amount of anxiety is to be expected and the level of anxiety is expected to correlate with whatever is going on in life. That's normal. I thought I experienced normal anxiety just like everyone else did. I was all grown up before I knew any different.

Source: http://www.wikihow.com/Heat-Milk-Without-Scalding

When I was a little girl, I used to have a hard time getting to sleep and getting back to sleep if I woke up in the night. I was worried but I couldn't tell you what I was worried about. My mom was wonderfully patient with me, always climbing out of her own cozy bed and blissful sleep to help me with a feeling that I could no longer manage on my own. We walked back to the kitchen, lit only by the single, dim bulb over the kitchen sink. She warmed a few cups of milk in a small saucepan on the stove, stirring constantly. As an adult, I understand that she was keeping the milk from scalding. As a child, though, she was stirring in calm and love. Adding a teaspoon of sugar made it perfect. I sipped on warm milk until I was relaxed enough to climb back in bed.

The little ritual has served me well through the years.

For more information about the 2013 Blogging from A to Z Challenge see the website of the same name.