When you find yourself juggling many ‘balls’ and realise that you have neglected to keep your most loyal Readers up to date and think it is time to reveal a little behind the scenes, this picture gives some of the story! This is a ‘Knowledge Corner’, late at night, one of the places where I write. The beeswax candle purifies the air and the sheepskin and warm rug keep the words cosy.
Hello my lovely Readers and huge apologies for such a long ‘absence’ …
I have been learning and learning and learning and learning and growing and growing and expanding and pushing myself, right out and beyond my cocoon.
Having shed the ‘caterpillar’ stage a short time ago, with the help of NeuroGym brain training and all of the resources that I have employed over the past two years or so, to grow and to shrug off the end of the breakdown that I suffered so completely in 2006, I have been pushing and pushing myself towards ‘butterfly’. Do you know what I mean?
Those who have been following this blog since its untidy landing on the worldwide web in January 2015, will have some idea of the journey that I have been on. I have been writing to you and for you, mostly from the quiet corner of the countryside in the UK where we have been living since August 2009.
You will know if you have been reading my work for some time, that I had no idea what a blog was, let alone how to do all the tech, and my presence online at the time was largely confined to emails or to Facebook, which I had finally decided to join after my eldest child, then sixteen, said that she wanted to do so herself about eight years ago.
As any ‘responsible’ parent would, I had a look at Facebook first … and instantly found myself suddenly surrounded by loved ones and friends, many of whom had been missing from my life for three decades since I had set off on an adventure to the UK from South Africa in December 1985. Once I was relatively au fait with how things worked and had looked into security etc, I gave my children the blessing to follow suit. Now this might sound ludicrous, but I still think every parent needs to be vigilant and that is our story, just as it is.
Having joined Facebook, my writing there began quite quickly. I shared photos and updates with the many friends and family who are too far away to be able to have ‘real time’ with us and, as my writing became more frequent, more vocal, more lengthy in written posts, I was encouraged by several friends and family members to start a blog … I think that took about two years to finally happen and The Holly Tree Tales was born. I truly had no idea before that what they were on about and why I needed a ‘blog’. Now it is more ‘website’ than blog, but the blog it still is.
Fast track to February 2020 and my little blog has turned five, there are over 250 blogposts to read, on a number of subjects as described on my Gravatar Profile, and I have a writing / sharing presence on Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, with several pages that I manage or have initiated on Facebook over the years as well. You may be following Towards Greener Borders, or The White Space, or HM Event Promotions, or even The Holly Tree Tales itself.
What I have never learnt to do – not yet anyway – is to bring traffic to my website and so, while we are a band of happy friends who come here to communicate or to peruse, there are hardly any people reading my articles on my blog as yet … which is a little frustrating. A lot of work goes into the writing and creating and then the sharing of the link on social media … but few see it. This is a frustration for many creators, unless we know all about keywords and search engine appetites and SEO ~ all of which I have heard of and am yet to understand.
I heard about Affiliate Marketing not long ago, seemingly by chance, and began to dip my toes into that arena, to see whether it might help to bring readers to my blog (if you are going to write it, they might as well be there to read it, no?) and also to find ways to monetise the work that I do here, which to date has been largely ‘voluntary’ – as with all of the other writings that you will find written by me on the internet. There is a vast ‘body’ of my writing online and far too little of it can as yet be purchased, ie books. I have managed one minute ebook so far, my first compilation of Ten Poems and am yet to create its paperback version.
This is when one sees how much one needs a Team and a support system to produce the work that one does. How much more one would achieve AND be able to help others with, by having assigned roles taken care of by those who could do them fast, ably and well. For me, excellence in all things is key. I long to have excellent others working with me to deliver the content that I have little problem delivering, it seems. Soon I shall find the way to do this!
When I write, this is the process: I feel the urge, pick up the pen or sit at the computer keyboard or pick up my phone … and the words do their thing. I simply have to let them flow. I get right out of the way and sometimes have barely edited a piece before it hits the airwaves … bam! My writing usually ‘writes itself’. That, I think is a gift, as I am not intentionally crafting what comes.
Over the years, some Readers have written to me to say that they have been helped or inspired by my writing and by my sharing some real information and story about my very ‘real’ life. That is an incredibly humbling thing. I am honoured to have a place in people’s lives as a mentor and a guide, although this has not been my intended ‘mission’ nor consciously chosen path. It is a blessing indeed, however, and one that I am conscious of being responsible about.
Those of us who are writing and speaking and sharing with others from any platform, physical or online, I believe, have an enormous responsibility to lead well, to be authentic and to maintain trust. I always only speak from what I feel or know from observation close at hand or have lived through or learnt first hand … and that is what makes writing easy for me, because it is what I know and has not come out of a book or a course, but is from my heart and my soul.
Recently I have begun to hear mention of the Knowledge Industry and how Self Education is becoming a ‘thing’, how the knowledge industry is valued at over $300+ MILLION per day and expected to grow to nearly $1 Billion per day by 2025, according to Forbes! This is absolutely phenomenal growth, for any industry, and shows how much impact the internet is having on lives globally.
There are many people who do not yet have access to the internet, to mobile communications, to any technology at all, but those who do are lapping up the information that they can find simply by doing an online search. This means that many can enhance learning, whether or not we attend a College or University or school of note. We can continue to grow and to seek to improve our skills via the internet and via workshops, webinars and books of our independent choice. This is so liberating!
A church leader said to me at a function I attended in around 2005: “We used to go to the Holy Spirit, now we go to Google for everything.” Clearly he was speaking for himself and his followers … I had not really caught the search engine ‘bug’ myself, at the time that I heard it was all the rage. Now I hear we can even earn bitcoin* by doing an online search!
And so, here we are in February 2020 and the internet is changing lives and lots of people are being impacted by what we can learn and source online.
And so, what is the news of ‘ANOTHER FIRST’??
You might ask.
Well, having come at all of this rather ‘slowly’, given my love for all things communication, I have managed to find myself slap bang in the middle of a most exciting movement, that is about to hit its second wave, and is becoming a global phenomenon. I shall soon be revealing to all of my friends what this exciting thing is that I have to share with you. Guess what business it is in?
Yes, you guessed right … The Knowledge Business. It is all about educating ourselves. And it is all about how you might use what you are good at to teach others how. Are you interested in doing this? If so, stand by for more, in due course.
On Friday last week, I took a moment to create a little video to hint at this and, again, this was a first for me: posting my very first video on LinkedIn. If you are on LinkedIn I would love you to take a look and have a listen to my first video there … it is a little blurry, but you’ll get the gist, I’m sure. The link is: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-6631680416015233024-5JCI
Once you have heard the message, do feel free to share your thoughts and to comment either here (below this post) or below the video itself. I’d love to hear what you think.
And about the news I am going to be sharing soon?
If you would like to be added to my email list, to be one of the very first to hear about what I shall be sharing on 19 February 2020 … only a few days away … then please fill out the form below, so that your name can be added to the mailing list!
NB. If you are reading this after 19th February, no problem! Fill in the form anyway and you’ll be included in the next mailing.
Thank you so much to all my loyal Readers and Followers on the various platforms, for reading, supporting, commenting and for simply being an all round great crowd of beautiful souls worldwide.
If you are not yet following the blog, please do so now. That way, you’ll be kept up to date with the latest blogposts via email or, if you are a WordPress client, you’ll see the latest posts in the blogpost newsfeed.
Until next time!
Stay mindful,
❤
Holly x
PS. If you would like to sign up for a NeuroGym brain training programme that is helping thousands of people to regain control of their financial lives, helping them to gain strength and health in their personal lives as well, click on the link to order Winning The Game Of Money, which comes with a full money back guarantee, as do all of their programmes.
If Fear is a problem for you, you might like to look at what NeuroGym has to offer to help you. The Winning The Game of Fear programme has helped many to overcome their greatest obstacles and to free themselves for a quality of life that they weren’t able to access before.
[*this affiliate link will take you to Regal Assets, who have information about crypto currency and other ways to invest]
❤
The Holly Tree Tales 