366

Well, here we are then. My own private and rather silly variation of “Project 365” is pretty much over. Technically, if you take the accompanying blogs into account, it was actually over twenty days ago, but that rather felt like cheating and, anyway, leaving the numbers for the year at 345 would have left me feeling ever-so-slightly uneasy, so 365 was the target, and 365 it had to be.

To be fair, my actual full year of blogging was completed a few days ago. In fact I think I commented upon the very fact myself upon these very pages, so I am probably falling into the trap of repeating myself, but never mind. After all there’s only one person in charge here and, no matter how tedious he might be, it’s he who gets to call the shots, set the agenda and tell his tales. To put it even more bluntly, he can write whatever he wants to if he likes and, as he is really me, there’s not a lot I’m likely to do to try to stop him.

Still, after that strange “out of mind experience” perhaps I should make a vague attempt to get back to the point, if, of course, there ever was one. Post number 366 during three years out of every four would indicate a year of daily postings, but you’ll have already noticed that those numbers don’t quite add up and it’s taken us a couple of weeks beyond that particular anniversary to reach that “magic” number.

Or has it…?

After all, with those other little nuggets parked in the Writers’ Blog and the dreadful failure of the tabloid (unwisely launched just as the world of tabloid journalism hit the rocks and proved that you really can’t spoof a spoof), the numbers were slightly higher than the target of 365 for the year even then. This was despite those long-ago early days here in Lesser Blogfordshire being somewhat tentative and the first month finding my providing even a contribution every other day a bit of a hard task which swiftly ran into the realms of banality.

Things only really went truly “daily” at the start of November, so if I was ever to honestly claim any form of success at achieving my own personal goals, we will have to wait until Halloween night (which seems strangely appropriate) to mark the crossing of that particular finishing line, and even then, in all truthfulness, of course, there have been days which were left fallow, and other days where much was written in anticipation of fallow days to come.

These are not the actions of a deviant master planner though, well, not all that deviant anyway, just the kind of self-knowledge of my own shortcomings that are already abundantly clear to anyone who might have been following the journey rather closely these past twelve months or so, but it does raise a bit of a personal conundrum…

If I do choose to finally bring these proceedings to a halt, because, to be perfectly frank it is getting a tad difficult to find quite so much time what with my new lifestyle and so forth, despite the fact that the requisite 365 items will have been produced in that time, can I really say to myself that these things were actually achieved on a daily basis, or would that be cheating myself?

In the end, will that really bother me much anyway? Because, if I were to be honest and hold my hand up and say quite unequivocally that there was an unbroken sequence of consecutive days stretching back from this very post that you’re (hopefully) reading, the tally might very well only add up to one.

And, in all honesty, does it really matter all that much anyway? I’m sure that even professional writers with their daily quotas work to an average and keep the odd novel or two in their drawer for those days when the big block lands or the world wakes them up with an unexpected surprise to deal with. A lot has happened in the world during this past year and some of it has even been noticed and remarked upon in these pages, and equally a fair amount (although not as much as for some) has gone on in my own little world, some of which has even seeped into the pages of this sad little series of tales from what we have come to know during our journey together as a dark corner of Lesser Blogfordshire.

In the end, I really do have to ask myself quite what this self-imposed and rather pointless exercise has actually achieved, and I still don’t really know. I suspect we will still stagger on towards that next milestone at the end of the month, but beyond that, the options will have to remain more mysterious, if only to try and create the slightest air of intrigue and anticipation for you, my most loyal and much appreciated tiny band of supporters. I suppose it is possible, (if highly improbable) that you are better described as a band of tiny supporters, but I’m unlikely to ever really know for sure.

For now, the journey continues, perhaps until I come to the realisation that the rest is merely repetition…