“State of your year. Write up a mid-year ‘State of my Year’ post.”

Still alive, still married, still solvent. The rest is detail.

No news is good news, but it doesn’t provide much meat for a new post. Instead, let’s look at how things are going in relation to the ‘365 Days of Writing Prompts’ that I’ve been gamely having a go at in 2014. 

So here we are. As it’s July 29th, this is Day 210 of the challenge – so not exactly mid-year then, if I was being pedantic (moi? Pedantic?) and this is ‘only’ my 58th post on this site since January 1st.

Oops.

It gets worse: four of this year’s posts so far have been outside the ‘365 Days’ category, including two that I reblogged from my other site, where my ‘proper’ photographs are to be found. I also regurgitated one post from last year, since the prompt was identical to a Daily Prompt from 2013.

Nobody read that one either.

So basically my strike rate for this challenge is about 25%.

Sincerely, hats off to everyone who’s managed to keep it up on an unremitting daily basis. However, I did indicate at the outset that there was little or no realistic prospect of me doing the same.

I can at least hope that I haven’t taxed the patience of my long-suffereing readership by my highly selective approach. And, indeed, although I can’t recall how many ‘followers’ I had at the beginning of January, I do know that the number has grown during the course of the year and is now comfortably in three figures. My thanks to you all.

Except the affiliate marketers, obviously.

Of course, it isn’t just from the kindness of my heart that I’m only batting about .250, as my American reader would say (although – correct me if I’m wrong – that’s not a bad number in a baseball context; pity it’s blogging we’re talking about).

Other calls on my time have limited my published ramblings. I’ve been taking some online courses. I’ve been travelling. There was the World Cup needed watching.

And I’m lazy.

There are also a few drafts kicking around that I haven’t considered to be good enough for publication. Reading what I have published, you can only imagine how awful those must be.

For the majority of ‘missed’ prompts, though, it’s been a case of the subject matter failing to stimulate my creative juices. Some of them have just been plain bonkers. Some require making up stories: not one of my strong points.

Other prompts deal with serious matters. I skip those as a matter of course. This isn’t to say that I don’t have opinions on weighty topics; I simply choose not to share them.

In much the same way that the definition of a gentleman is someone who knows how to play the accordion, but kindly refrains from doing so.

Besides, in most cases I can’t think of anything amusing to say about them that wouldn’t come across as merely flippant.

You did realise that this is supposed to be a humorous blog? Didn’t you?

Oh. Sorry about that.

Must try harder.