300 Posts and the Start of a New Year

Okay so technically as a pagan the new year began for me just over a week ago with the Solstice but as I had no computer it passed by rather quietly.  I have to say in some ways I believe the Mayans had it right for me personally as the dates for their end of the world and the pagan year end were in time with each other but I think we misinterpreted their meaning.  I say this because this new year I really do feel like it is the end of one way of life and the beginning of a new one which I am really excited about.

In 2012 with the help of friends around the world who I have never met in person I found the self belief and confidence to actually believe in my own ability as a writer. I have written a specific writing resolutions post to be published tomorrow so I won’t go into that too much here but let me say I am very excited about the projects and aims I have set for the next year.

One area which has suffered this year is reading anything other than blogs, I really do need to remedy that in the future and although I hate reading by numbers I think setting a target of reading 20 pages a day of which ever book I have on the go is realistic, if all else fails I will read them while laying in the bath.

My blog which I envisioned as a sort of online journal which I only expected myself and a few friends to be interested in has become so much more.  You have provided a sounding board for my ideas, an audience for my stories, I have met people who have become not only friends but teachers showing me ways to improve my own work.  There is a preconception about the writer as a lonely, hermit locked away with a typewriter isolated in their own world, well maybe that applies to those for whom financial success has altered their way of life but I think the blogosphere shows in full technicolour glory the bonds of friendship, respect and comradeship is alive and well within this community.

In real life I am lucky that I will start this new year in many ways far healthier than I have the last few, my surgery has been a success (touch wood) though I am still in recovery stages as I work on getting the muscles working again, I have stopped smoking even though I still really really want one which is weird considering the smell now makes me feel sick.  But also I cannot help but think about those for whom the past year has not been so considerate of, poor little Charlie whose trial treatment failed to deliver the miracle we all hoped for, now the family are left facing a very bleak new year unless the power of prayer can provide a miracle.  It would be easy to lose faith at a time like this but it is the very time when one must draw strength from them Charlie as you know was given weeks to live a couple of months ago yet he is still here and fighting, there is an amazing young lady named Alice Payne who has been fighting off this disease and refusing to let it beat her for over twelve months now.  It is the most we can do to hold on to each day as it passes and pray it brings these children closer to a cure which surely must be found to combat this terrible disease.  Children teach us what it really means to appreciate life, they do not know that they should be defeated by this thing which has invaded their bodies, they do not know they should fear it and this gives them the very strength to keep fighting unlike adults they have not learned to give up.

I am determined to make the most of every day and to raise some funds for both the Charlie fund and for the other charity close to my heart The Joseph Salmon Trust which helps families who are struck by the terrible tragedy of losing a child.  Will I make thousands for either probably not but I do believe every penny counts and if I make a hundred pounds or so for each then I will be contented.

I know this has ended up as a far more serious post than I ever intended it to be so if you have read down this far may I wish you all a happy and healthy New Year and hope your wildest dreams may come to fruition.

My highlight of 2012….all of you guys coming into my life.