At the start of any new year it’s a great idea to review your goals and try to see where you have made progress from the previous goals set, and where you might need to work a bit harder!

I recently had a meeting with Steve King, someone I have worked with many times over the past  two years.  Steve has set out his goals for 2011 on his blog and you can take a look at those here.  We are working together on some new sites in 2011, with another marketer, Pat Graham, and thought the best way to kick start the process would be with a face to face meeting.  What a  great  thing to do!  If you ever get the chance to meet other marketers in the flesh you should go for it, it really makes heaps of difference.  Skype is great, emails can work, but they do not compare with a face to face meeting.  The three of us were able to sit at the computer and discuss our ideas, try out some options and generally just put pen to paper with us all having equal input.

I have a number of goals for this coming year, and one is to try to attend the Northallerton meet ups that are run by Randy Smith.  I have been trying to get to one for the last year but feel this is the year I will make more of an effort and take that opportunity.  I am hoping to meet some people whose names are very familiar to me (not just you, Randy!) and am sure the experience will be well worth it.

What are your goals for 2011?  What ever they are, I wish you luck with them!

Enjoy the journey.

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For my part I have spent some time arranging for an exhibition of the photographs of the herd to be showcased at my gallery, Art-next-the-Sea, with the preview being held on October 10th, 2009 from 2-5pm. You are all welcome to come to this preview, and Horse Whispering Healer and WOW! founder, Helen Wingstedt, will be at the gallery for the preview.  After the launch of the collection we will  be selling prints via our internet shop; this will be able to be accessed via the Art-next-the-Sea website.

I will now hand the rest of this post over to Helen.

The Whispering World – Helen Wingstedt

An enormous thank you to you, Mandy, and to every one of you who’ve taken the time to read Mandy’s inspiring feature and responded to my Equine SOS – Save the Herd at World of Whispers.  August 2009 has easily been one of the most stressful months of my life on the one hand, and one of the most encouraging on the other.  To have so many people come forward to enthusiastically support the horses, the Project and me, for the work we’ve done and want to do, has been an incredibly moving and humbling experience which will be remembered and repaid in any way we are able.

I look forward to breaking good news with you all, as it happens, in the months ahead and thank everyone who by donating, will have made success from distress for animals and people possible.

Very best wishes,

Helen Wingstedt
The Horse Whisperer

See how the project is progressing so far at World of Whispers.

Enjoy the journey.

The second thing that happened had a real impact on my perception of the relationships we build in our lives.  I went to a dear friend’s funeral last week and two things in particular struck me.  The first was the amount of people I knew there, and the second was the amount of people I didn’t know!  We spend our lives cultivating relationships around us but often all are separate from each other.  We have our family and they are separate often from our friends, then we have our work colleagues who are also friends, we have friends in different places (often different parts of the world even), we have our friends here on the internet.  All of these people are important in our lives, and yet all sit in separate compartments within our lives.  Not deliberately, but by virtue of the role they play within our lives.   We all came together for this person’s funeral and all felt we knew him so very well, but all knew him in a different way.

The third thing that happened is that I read back through my previous posts on here, and in particluar ‘Hobbies and Interests‘.  It wasn’t so much the post that struck a chord but the comment left by another fellow blogger, Steve Deerfield.  Steve said ‘I liked all your posts and especially your attitude about keeping in touch with people that we actually CAN touch.  If there’s any huge sucking sound going on anymore I think it’s the sound of our attentions being drawn to the internet and the promises and experiences that it may hold.’

Although I agree with Steve about that comment I also feel that the relationships we are building with each other through the internet are as valuable in real terms as our ‘tangible’ friendships.  I place great value on my relationships with others, whether they are family, friends I’ve known all my life, relatively new friends, and people I can now call friends who I have met through the internet.  Each of you are equally important in my life and I thank you all for the opportunity to know some part of you.  Who am I without the other people in my life?

Enjoy the journey.