This is my last post

...of 2020.

Did I scare you there for a minute?

No, I do not plan to leave the blogging world anytime soon. One never knows, of course. One could get hit by a truck on the way to the grocery store.

But unless that or something worse happens, I hope to be around for quite some time yet.

I have surprised myself by publishing more posts on this blog in 2020 than in any year since 2013.

It's true.

This blog saw the light of day in the last week of September in 2007. By the end of the year I had written 43 posts. Annualizing the rate, had I started the blog at the beginning of the year there might have been 172 posts in 2007.

In 2008, there were 228.
In 2009, there were 206.
In 2010, there were 184.
In 2011, there were 219.
In 2012, there were 220.
In 2013, there were 194.

Beginning in 2014, I began to blog less frequently.

In 2014, I wrote 100 posts.
In 2015, I wrote 91 posts.
In 2016, I wrote 77 posts.
In 2017, I wrote 71 posts.
In 2018, I wrote 86 posts.
And in 2019, I wrote 79 posts.

which brings us to 2020, which in a few more hours will be gone forever. For some unknown reason my blogging output increased this year. This is my 126th post of the year, a significant increase over each of the last six years, but nowhere near the heady days of 2008 through 2013.

When I started this blog in September 2007, I was 66 years old. In about two and a half months, if I am still alive and kicking, I shall turn 80. No wonder I have slowed down.

Unless I am picking up again.

Only time will tell, and I apologize for boring you with all the statistics.

The way I figure it, there have been some high points and some low points in all these years, and I have no way of knowing which are which. I'm pretty sure I have offended some along the way, and again, with very few exceptions, I have no way of knowing which are which, or perhaps that should be who are who or whom are whom or whatever the heck it should be.

So as a sort of end-of-year mea culpa (my fault, my most grievous fault), I want to reach way back into my childhood into the Cokesbury Hymnal from the Methodist Church in which I grew up and give to everyone an end-of-year apology in the form of the words of the 1911 hymn, "An Evening Prayer" by C.M. Battersby. The music was by Charles H. Gabriel, but you will have to imagine that.

Since 2020 has been too much like one long nightmare from which we all hope to wake very soon, I think it is fitting to turn an evening prayer into an end-of-year request for forgiveness.

It may not help, but it couldn't hurt.

An Evening Prayer
by C.M. Battersby

If I have wounded any soul today,
If I have caused one foot to go astray,
If I have walked in my own willful way,
Dear Lord, forgive!

If I have uttered idle words or vain,
If I have turned aside from want or pain,
Lest I myself should suffer through the strain,
Dear Lord, forgive!

If I have been perverse or hard, or cold,
If I have longed for shelter in Thy fold,
When Thou hast given me some fort to hold,
Dear Lord, forgive!

Forgive the sins I have confessed to Thee;
Forgive the secret sins I do not see;
O guide me, love me and my keeper be,
Dear Lord, Amen.