392

Well, that was it, the year of daily outpourings completed, November to November at least statistically covered, if not, in all fairness, literally achieved. Halloween to Halloween which, I suppose, does at least seem to be somehow fairly appropriate given the horror stories that I’ve churned out these past dozen months. All of the trick achieved with little that could be considered a treat.

Still, I can, at last tick off one of the mighty abstract landmarks that I had set for myself, one of those small, pointless and largely irrelevant little goals in the top secret, cards played close to the chest “to do” list for Lesser Blogfordshire. “Write something every day for a year” being, I can now exclusively reveal, being one of the proverbial “its”. The idea behind that little notion was that it would get me into the habit, and that would transform into compelling me to write other projects. I never anticipated the slow transformation into the all-consuming, all-encompassing monster of a classic love/hate relationship that it has sometimes seemed to have become.

Still, I can breathe again now. The party’s over. I’ve “been there, done that” and I can relax and enjoy the rest of the ride, or just let things ease down gently, stagger along towards the other goals that have been set, or perhaps more sensibly, just let things quietly die. Time, one of the great obsessions we have returned to time and again (Ho! Ho!) this past year, will tell. After all, it usually does.

I did once harbour the vague hope that, rather like in some Dickensian Übernovel, all the disparate elements of the previous three hundred and ninety-odd separate entries would suddenly start to bind together into some kind of satisfying literary whole, which would reward the reader who had regularly bought into this unfolding part-work. Sadly, of course, I ain’t no Dickens, and this ain’t no “Bleak House” (well, other than the fact that it sometimes can get pretty bleak and is mostly written in a house at any rate), but anyway, real life simply doesn’t unfold in a neat and tidy way like that I suppose.

Unfortunately.

No-one would be happier than me if I was able to control the narrative thrust of the events that involve me and I could round things off in a satisfactory way that left no loose threads dangling and left everyone if not exactly “living happily ever after”, certainly allowing them suitable closure and a satisfying conclusion to their own story arc that left everyone reading about it walking away with just the slightest air of contentment.

Instead we all carry on rattling on in our individual haphazard ways. Real life is seldom as simple as it used to be when I followed the soaps. You generally can’t just pack your house into the back seat of a taxi over the course of an afternoon and head off into a new life and then never be seen or heard from or referred to again. Somehow, no matter how much we might try, we remain either resolutely here, muddling along and being an annoying presence in the existence of those who would rather be rid of us, or our legacy, whatever it may be, continues to pop up in the subconscious of everyone we ever met every once in a while, and usually at the most unexpected or unfortunate moments.

For who hasn’t suddenly found themselves saying the wrong name to the wrong person, or had a phone call out of the blue that takes some explaining? Who has never woken in the night after dreaming of a person long dead or forgotten and completely convinced yourself that you were only talking to them yesterday? This is the real world where people do suddenly move back into the area, or pounce on you in the supermarket as if they’d never been away, or reapply for their old job, or offer you your old job back and you might very well find yourself shoveling the same old stuff with the same old faces, and paying those same old bills, long after you thought you’d have managed to retire to that yacht and be living the high life.

If we could control our lives more, like we can with the characters in a novel, maybe we’d all be a lot happier, but life might also be a lot more predictable and possibly also a tad more mundane. Chandler would use the old trick of having someone burst into a room brandishing a revolver if he thought his plots were stagnating, which only goes to show that part of the spice of life is having to deal with the unexpected, and how we do so, whether we like it or not.

I used to think that “Expect the Unexpected” was something of a good credo to live by, but now I’m not so sure. Perhaps “Savour the Unexpected” might be a better way to go, even though, personally, I suspect that would actually terrify me. But of course (and bringing all this, rather predictably but also slightly neatly, back around to the main topic of our discourse here today), very few of these 392 moments that I have plucked from my mind and chosen to share with the world were planned for this time last year. There have been a few surprises (and a fair few pleasant surprises at that) along the way, and there may yet be more to come, although, I suspect, rather less regularly…

After all, we should all be aware of our own limitations.

We can seek to exceed them, of course, but be aware of them nevertheless.

Here’s to the next milestone…