It's that time of year again.

The time of year when I start to shrink away into the shadows of Blogland, marginalising myself and peering anxiously back at you all, wondering where, and indeed if, I fit in, wondering why I bother, wondering what it is I'm trying to achieve and whether what I'm achieving (if I'm achieving anything at all) outweighs the inadequacies and irritations engendered.

Is there still a place for my kind of blog today? What is my kind of blog? Natural, honest, earnest, a mish-mash of feelings, occurrences, memories. Undrafted, unrehearsed splishes and sploshes of the mundane existence of a not-very-interesting person. This is how blogs were when I started, nearly four years ago. Or at least, this is how it seemed.

Newer blogs seem to be more carefully constructed, drafted and crafted, enigmatic, only revealing snippets, the author distant and aloof, the themes narrow, the writing more self-consciously about writing than about the subject. In the face of this beautiful prose or that comedy masterpiece, my own efforts feel naïve, unsophisticated, too revealing, too earnest.

Whilst I try to reassure myself that I have just as much right as anyone to tell my story, I still can't help feeling like an eternal low-achiever, paddling clumsily in the stagnant pool of blogging mediocrity, my posts a pathetic bleating, lost among the herds of millions of blogging sheep with nothing to set me apart.

Yes, I'm having a little mope. It's just that time of year...