Like the road to hell, I started out on this Bloganuary exercise (don’t call it a bloody ‘journey”: if you’re not physically moving from one place to another it is categorically NOT a journey) with good intentions.

I managed the first three days fairly straightforwardly, but for some reason I never got the email prompt for the 4th and yesterday’s held no appeal whatsoever. ‘What brings joy in your life?’ just struck me as an excuse to churn out some kind of saccharine-infused list. Not for me, thank you. This blog may be many things – or, to be more accurate, very few – but it takes pride in having no added artificial sweetener.

So why do I write? Good question and I’m beginning to wonder that myself. As, no doubt, are you.

At the basic level, I write because I can: not just in the sense of being literate but being – I hope – capable of constructing proper sentences and conveying an idea clearly. I was always ‘good with words’, even as a child, and English was always my best subject at school. Studying for a degree in Philosophy was good training in the art of clarity of meaning, and over thirty years of mainly writing reports as a job kept me in the groove.

But I have to be honest; now that I no longer have to write, it doesn’t come as easily as it used to. That’s a major reason why I do this Bloganuary challenge – it concentrates the mind. Always assuming that the prompts aren’t bonkers, of course.

Sadly, I seem to have lost the ability to come up with ideas of my own and my powers of concentration (amongst other things) aren’t as good as they used to be. However, harking back to a theme I referred to in response to the prompt about being brave, I’ll just get my head down and keep plugging away.

Probably.