Recently our local vicar reached the grand old age of 65.  We held a surprise retirement party for him in the local village hall.

I love these events.  There is always such a variety of people there, and often people from the parish who I don’t see very often.  It’s nice to have the opportunity to catch up on all their news and share my own with them.

The other thing I like about these events is the food.  Being a real foodie I love the ’shared suppers’ where everyone brings a plate of fare of their own choosing.  There are always some extraordinary dishes on the table to try.

We had a collection for Tim, deciding to give him the cash rather than buy an inappropriate or unwanted gift.  After all, at 65 he more than likely has everything he needs or wants.  We decided he might like to use the money for something like a holiday, or maybe he has a project he can put it towards.

The amount collected was testiment of Tim’s good works in the parish.  He was handed nearly £1,000 on the night, in a box that looked like it might have contained a carriage clock.  I think he thought it was a carriage clock at first!

Tim made a speech; we expected nothing less from this great narrator.  He told us how humbled he was by our generosity, and yet it is he who has been the generous one, constantly giving of his time, always having an ear to listen, a wise word to say.  He told us about his decision to give his life to God, and made us all laugh when he said ‘neither of us mentioned me stopping at 65′!

We are expecting a new incumbent in the near future, but Tim will continue to work in our parish – mostly unpaid, of course, as he has been for some years now.  People who work in a caring role don’t stop caring just because they reach retirement age.  God Bless them.

Enjoy the journey.

Today I drew the plans for our new extension on the house.  Don’t get too excited; that sounds rather more grand than the sketch I have in front of me!  The point of the exercise is not to submit these very detailed but very inaccurate drawings to the local planning office, this is an exercise in setting my intentions.

I love where we live.  We’ve been here for 19 years now and although I vaguely consider living somewhere else from time to time (Scotland being the favourite choice!) I don’t think there will ever come a time when this house will not be mine.

There really is only one drawback here, and that is we have no dining room.  We love entertaining, I adore cooking, but currently we can only host a buffet type evening or a sit down meal for a maximum of 6 people (and that’s a squeeze!).

The plan I have always had is to build an extension that will become a lounge and small library downstairs, with a bedroom and ensuite bathroom above, turning the existing lounge into a dining room, as it is only 14′ square.  In addition to this we will put a conservatory leading off from the kitchen, not too big, just about 10′ x 16′.

So I have now drawn the plans to set my intention and let the Universe know exactly what I want.  I thought, with my product going live in the not too distant future, that this would be a good time to decide what I am aiming for.

I hope you know what you are aiming for too.  Write it down, draw a picture, make a plan.  Let the Universe know what you want from it!

Enjoy the journey.

This is one of the longest breaks I have had between posts so far.  We have been putting a pond in at home and it has swallowed up much more time than I expected it to.

We have a small pond already, and each year the fish increase in numbers and the babies grow ever bigger.  It definitely was time for a larger pond as we lost two of the biggest fish last year in the humid weather.  We were very sad about it and know that if we had increased the size of the pond earlier it may not have happened.

So we decided to set to a couple of weeks ago and went to the reclaimation yard to buy a dozen garden sleepers.  They arrived the same day, which was incredible service.

Our garden is a bit up and down and mostly field grass so the ground needed to be levelled first so we could get the base down for the sleepers to sit on.  We have built a ‘box’ 3 sleepers high, and the pond sits in the middle.  The whole structure is 8 feet square and we have a shaped moulded pond inside it.  Once it is full of soil we will plant alpines around the edge between the pond and the sleepers.

At the moment, after much hard work, we are at the stage where the box is built and level (always a hard part I find) and the pond is inset into the ground inside the box.  We now need to fill the box with half sand then soil and compost for the plants.  After that we need to dig out the electric wire that leads to the old pond and re-route it to the new pond position for the pump to be set up.  Transfering the fish will be quite a long job as the water needs to be right before we do that.

But then our fish will have a new, bigger home!

Enjoy the journey.

Since I started the Masterclass some fantastic things have happened.  I could not be more pleased with the way this course has gone for me, both in terms of the people I have met, the work I have done and the amazing amount of things I have learnt.

One other thing I have been doing for quite some time now is selling oil lamp glassware on ebay.  I sell boxes of 4 oil lamp chimneys for Duplex burners.  The majority of other sellers are offering single chimneys and they are charging almost £10 for each single chimney plus around £5 extra for postage and packing.

The boxes of 4 I sell are £20 with £2.99 postage and packing so I have offered a really good deal.  Occassionally I get someone asking for just the one chimney but I only sell them in packs of 4.  The reason for this is because the crates of chimneys I get come packed in 4’s in double wall cartons, so all I do is pop some ‘fragile’ tape around them, write the address on the front and go to the post office.  The postage second class costs just £2.70 and the other 29p pays for the tape and pens and shoe leather!

This week I received the latest delivery of 2,000 chimneys.  The company that make them have been bought out by someone else and the new owners have changed the packaging!  Clearly in order to save money they now pack the 4’s in single wall cartons.  This is a tragedy for me as I can no longer put them straight back into the post.  Single wall cartons simply are not strong enough for our postal service, especially when the contents are glassware.  Quel dommage!

So now I have to review my whole system as no-one makes boxes the size I need for 4 chimneys.  Custom made cartons are way too expensive.  And the whole thing is now much more complicated in terms of time as I have to repack every box of chimneys I send out.  A big alteration I had not banked on.  I’m sure it will be fine, I have found a box I can get them into safely but I will now have to buy extra packing too.

Sometimes things just don’t work out the way you hoped!

Enjoy the journey.

Yes, I know this is a song title by Joan Armatrading, but I’m not going to write about the song or Joan Armatrading as it happens!  John McNally would probably be very pleased if I did, given his great appreciation of music.

I am, not for the first time, going to talk about my own weakness.  When I was thinking about this it just happened to come out in the form of the song title.

I am a risk taker in life.  I find I am constantly faced with opportunities and I relish them.  Most of the time I go right ahead and have a go at whatever comes my way.  Of course sometimes I don’t for practical reasons; like the time I was offered an antiques business 90 miles from home.  Completely impractical – I seriously considered it though!  I came up with a hundred and one ways I could make it work.  But it wasn’t practical, I knew that deep down.

But my weakness is not so much taking every opportunity no matter what it is; my weakness is that if I find I cannot jump over a hurdle, I just don’t!  I feel so weak for not challenging myself enough.  I feel weak for the feeble attempts I give to some things that I believe I cannot do.  There is a better part of me that believes I can do anything and everything; but the reality is that actually I can’t.

I have found that with some of the technical side of the Internet.  I believe I can’t do it, so I stop trying.

Good job I can outsource!

Enjoy the journey.

Some time ago I posted about organisation (you can read that post here) and how I had spent some time getting a few things in order to make it easier to complete tasks.

This week I reviewed the product of  Ann Martinez who had a piece in her product about time management.  I contstantly get asked by fellow Masterclass students how I manage to complete as much as I do, so I’m going to let you in on the secret.

There isn’t a secret!  It is simply about time management.   I mean, let’s face it, how much do we want to succeed at this?  How much effort are we prepared to put into it to make it work?  All I do is make a daily allocation of time, like having any other job, and stick to it as much as possible.

I used to go to bed at 10pm every night and sit up reading a book or doing a crossword for one and a half to two hours.  Now I spend those hours from 10pm working towards my internet dream.  I don’t often stay up beyond 11.45pm as I seriously recognise the need for  sleep.

Of course there is other time allocated – I always check my emails every morning first thing.  The computer warms up while I put the kettle on, then I flick through the emails with a my first cup of tea.  I delete every one that looks totally boring, I don’t even open them to see what they are!  I organise the emails into files so if I need to find anything I know where it is, and that saves time later (all Masterclass students have their own little file!).

If I have a bit more time in the morning I will visit the forum to see what is going on.  It doesn’t take long, a few seconds really, just to look.  If I need to leave comments or post anything I usually try to do that at this time too.

Of course the great part for me is I work in shops and can read or get on the Internet if I have no customers and no other jobs to do, but basically even if I did there would be key tasks that are much quicker to manage because I have put a system in place to cope with them.

A great idea is to make a list of things you need to do.  Start by prioritising the list and try to set yourself a target to complete every day.  Don’t overstretch yourself.  Say today you will achieve the top 3, or the top 5 items, depending what they are.  When they have gone re-work the list.  The key is to not allow something to stay at the bottom of your list because it has a low priority.  At least once a week those bottom items need to be tackled or they will get left behind.  Give it a try, you might find it works for you.

How much do you want to succeed?  An allocated time regularly will see you through.  Treat it like any other job you have to do.

Enjoy the journey.

This week I had a rare afternoon off.  It doesn’t happen often, I can tell you!  New carpets were fitted at one of the shops and after the fitting I took the old, dirty carpets to the local tip.

Needing a shower I decided at this point to go home and take the rest of the day off.  A bold decision – if we are not open we cannot sell anything – but it was necessary to my overall well being.

I have become so used to being at work 7 days a week I realise I have slipped into an unhealthy pattern.  I don’t take regular time for things outside of work.  I even went to have my car valeted after the shower – Bliss!

On Friday evening I read 8 palms for a charity fund raising event.  Palm reading is another little hobby of mine.  Two of the palms I read had no defined fire line.  This is the career line.  I don’t often see this.  I have a very strong fire line in my hand and am used to seeing similar definition in the palms I read.

What this lack of a clear fire line means is that a career does not feature strongly in the bearers life.  It does not mean they do not work, just that they have other priorities.  Part of me envied these two people as I saw them as people who have got their priorities right.

Susan Owen-Thursfield has a splendid post on her blog about taking time out.  You can read it here.

Work is not the be all and end all, as I proved to myself on my afternoon off.

Enjoy the journey.

I don’t usually include pre-written content in my blog posts but I have just been sent something by a friend that I would like to share with you, my loyal blog readers.  It is called ‘Stone’.

‘Two friends were walking through the desert.  During some point of the journey they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other in the face.

The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything wrote in the sand:

“Today my best friend slapped me in the face”.

They kept on walking until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath.  The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but the friend saved him.

After he recovered from the near drowning he wrote on a stone:

“Today my best friend saved my life”.

The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend asked him “after I hurt you, you wrote in the sand, and now you write on a stone.  Why?”

The friend replied “when someone hurts us we should write it down in sand where the winds of forgiveness can erase it away.  But when someone does something good for us we must engrave it in stone where no wind can erase it”.

Learn to write your hurts in the sand and to carve your benefits in stone.

They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.

Do not value the things you have in your life, but value who you have in your life.’

One of my great friends, John McNally, has written about how he maintains connections with those important people in his life.  You can read his blog post about it here.

Enjoy the journey.

In a previous post I wrote about some exciting developments that were happening in my internet career.  You can read the post here.  One of those was a joint venture I have entered into with Steve King.  Well, I’m not allowed to talk about it yet so don’t tell him I wrote this post!  We’re going live soon so watch this space!  And remember, you heard it here first…

One other thing I would like to tell you about is a really exciting development for a good friend of mine, Keith Alston.  Keith is starting a new membership site and I thought you may like to have a look at it.  Hit this link to take you straight there.  http://www.lkldigitalmedia.com.
It is set to launch within the next two weeks and he has guaranteed everybody who requests advance notification a massive discount if they decide to join.  He is also letting you have a whole bunch of brand new downloads for free as a thankyou for requesting info.  Keith guarantees to upload brand new ebooks and software packages every week (at least 2 but probably more for the first few months).  The big news is that it’s going to be the cheapest membership site on the internet but still providing all the top products that the big boys offer.  Anyway, take a look and decide for yourself and get the free downloads while you can as the page and the special opening deal will be getting pulled next week.

And remember, don’t tell Steve about this post.  (shhh…..)

Enjoy the journey.

I was driving home tonight and listening to the radio.  Jackie Wilson’s song ‘Your Love Has Lifted Me Higher’ was on and my heart swelled when I heard it.  One of the most powerful emotions is love and I know how lucky I am to have the love of a partner in my life.

I am very fond of music.  I sing in a choir so I guess I’d have to be really.  ‘Dedicated To The One I Love’ is a favourite of mine and my partner and I sing it as a duet (along with less well known songs!).

I decided to write this post and dedicate it ‘to the one I love’, my partner, for a million and one reasons.  Sometimes I know I can take my partner for granted, especially right now when I am spending so much time on the Internet trying to get my online business off the ground.

Ben Johnson’s partner wrote two brilliant posts about what it’s like to be on the ‘other side’ of the partnership, with the Internet in the middle.  You can read them both here.

I am only as good as the people around me, and I know my partner takes a lot of the strain at times.  Whenever I succeed at something I am well aware that there are two people who have contributed to that success.  No matter how visible I am my partner is always beavering away in the background, ensuring everything else still runs smoothly.

Love makes the world go around.  Try not to take your partner for granted.  Try to make time to let them know how very special they are, even when you are busy.  I know I must.

Enjoy the journey.