I think it only fair that I make it clear, before you get down to thinking ‘Here he goes again,’ that this little tract is not about anxious soul searching – sunny me remains in charge – but simply addresses a question that, to date, I have been unable to answer, to wit, how will I ever know if I get this right?

As much as I am told that I really should do this thing just for myself and not for the benefit of the very small number of atypically enlightened people who actually read it, I do find that my enthusiasm is wont to wane when my daily readership falls below the winter temperature (in Celsius) of that little red and white striped number at the top of the world.  It seems to me that doing anything purely for one’s own ends seldom ends well and, vain as it is (very well, ‘Vain as I am…’) I do occasionally find it difficult to dredge up the requisite zeal for writing when I know in advance that what I have wrestled onto paper (like man v octopus) is not going to be read, and I am fully aware that of late my regular readership has dwindled faster than Vladimir Putin’s Trustpilot rating.  I plod on though.  I keep to my self-imposed schedule because it is important to me: it is my challenge.  Writing is easy – it is my joy – but keeping to a timetable is not.  I do still flip onto my ‘stats’ from time to time – most recently to find that my ‘weeklies’ are now well below what were once my ‘dailies’ – and I do occasionally find myself celebrating a 1% increase on the day, even if that only adds up to 5% of an actual person.  I have no social media presence – which is definitely my choice – so what do I expect?  I don’t worry about not having hundreds of readers, only about not writing well enough to entertain those I do have.  I am, happy that I have never knowingly published anything that I felt was not ‘good enough’ (for me), even though I have often published pieces with the certain knowledge that they would not be read.  Never mind, I enjoyed writing them.  Some of my favourite pieces have been read by fewer people than my tea leaves.

I do, from time to time, try to predict what will be well-received and what will not, but with little success.  I am less enlightened than an eight-ball in a coal-hole, but am I downhearted?  Well, just occasionally, yes if I’m honest.  I do sometimes feel like a gardener whose prize marrow is deemed to be of insufficient quality for a place on the paste-table by the toilets at the village show – even though I have flung more shit at it than the rest of the village combined.  Yet, perversely, I am not crestfallen: if I suddenly achieved viral fame – whatever that might be – I would almost certainly not know what to do with it.  I would see no pecuniary benefit – although I would, obviously, be prepared to discuss the film rights with that nice Mr Spielberg.

My inability to divine in advance what will, and will not, be successful is what really irks.  Every now and then the analytical part of my brain (just to the right of ‘retention of facts’, where there’s lots of room) starts asking for answers and, frankly, I am at a loss.  I do not fully understand the way it works, but if a piece is only read by a very small number of people, that does not, surely, make it a bad piece because – in the absence of a big review – reading it would be the only way to find out.  It’s more likely, I suppose, that the piece after the bad piece would be the one to suffer reader-wise, but how would I know?

If I’m honest, I’m not at all sure of what I’d do with thousands of readers, what would I write about?  How would I keep them all happy?  I’m very content just now with my WordPress lot: I write what and when I like; I publish to a routine that keeps OCD me out of the straitjacket and I enjoy the ‘conversations’ I am able to have with (I was going to say ‘like-minded souls’, but that seems unduly harsh on you all) my little band of cyber-pals.  If one day I run out of something to say then I can stop – although it’s never stopped me up to now – and one day, probably when I alone constitute my only reader, I will stumble across the answer and, when I do, I will let you know – as long as I can still remember the question…