One of the things I like most about blogs and following certain bloggers is the feeling every day or so as though I get to unwrap a present from someone I’ve come to know in a small  but real way over years.

Visiting the websites of my favourite bloggers while drinking my morning coffee is a lot nicer than checking news headlines or my Facebook feed. I really appreciate the time, effort, and thoughtfulness that goes into their posts.

One thing I dislike about blogs and blogging is that unless one has a bit of free time on one’s hands or is getting paid to blog people tend not to update them very often. That’s why I’m not very happy with my own blog!

This year has been a big one for me personally and work-wise and a very full one for my family. I often have the thought that I’d love to update the blog with this or that thing, or explore this or that topic in depth but I’ve usually been unable to. There is literally no more time to squeeze out of the days or weeks, unless I give up more sleep which I can’t do. (Not if I want to stay well anyway!) Next year may be a different story.

I have a very small readership here, but one thing I have learnt this year (which I already knew but it has really sunk in deeply) is that writing for me is not a numbers game. But I do love the meeting of minds (and souls) that can happen, sometimes spectacularly, other times with quiet but long-reaching effects, through a person’s sincere and truthful writing.

Somehow, through strange and awesome movements of grace, I’ve been able to participate in this both as a reader and a writer. One reader (not sure she still reads here, this will be the test!) has even become a real-life friend. Hi Ana! A couple of old friends come here too.

Others who have contacted me out of the blue are now regulars in my thoughts and prayers.

So no, I don’t have many readers here, maybe less than a dozen who will read and enjoy my posts  regularly. But you few are the ones I think of when I have that impulse of ‘I wish I had time to blog this’. I want to show you what I’ve been up to, tell you what I’ve been thinking, whinge about how hard things are when they suck, tell you how great things are when they’re going well. There are lots of things I’d like to write that don’t fit into the other places where I write.

Not because I need to see the sight of my own words, or to document my family’s life, but because, for one, to paraphrase Flannery O’Connor, I write in order to know what I think.

And secondly, as someone else has said somewhere, I write to know that I’m not alone. If you have been reading this blog, as much as I’ve been able to keep it going this year, you have helped me (and by extension my husband and children) get through a busy, exciting, stressful year. More than you know.

Thank you.

• The photo: A beautiful card I received on the weekend.