Well where do I start. This year has been a weird mix of
emotions that has involved the sad loss of the father of three of my children
and the happy occasion of the birth of my fourth son, and there have been many
ups and downs in between. I’ve also had a couple of unexpected achievements.
At the beginning of the year I started my Chasing Dreams
blog with a post about projects I had in motion and what I was hoping to
achieve in 2012. To my surprise I realised that with a bit of motivation and a
lot of hard work, my dreams could become a reality.
One of my goals that I had listed was to write a song to
raise money for Cancer Research UK. This was inspired by the death of Michael
Harris, the father of three of my children who lost his battle with cancer on
the 1st May. I not only wanted my song to raise money for this
amazing charity but it was also something I wanted to put together for my boys
to have something to remember their dad by.
I was lucky enough to have my song produced by a local musician,
Chris Millington. My husband then put a slideshow video together to go with the
song and you can watch this on you tube by following this link – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoXoptiiHpk
My story made ITV WestCountry News and I performed it live
on BBC Radio Devon. I also made front page of my local newspaper The North
Devon Gazette and had a write up in The North Devon Journal and EX33 and EX34
Magazines. My song also became available to download from iTunes, Amazon,
eMusic and Google Play. Quite an achievement I’d say!
My main aim for this song was to find an established artist
to record it to help raise maximum funds for Cancer Research UK. This is an
ongoing project that I hope to develop further in 2013.
Another goal I wanted to achieve in 2012 was to have a piece
of my writing (be it poetry, fiction etc) published. I didn’t really think this
was possible at the time of writing it down but again to my surprise I made it
happen.
I had written a poem called ‘Chocolate Temptation’ that I
included in an assignment I was writing as part of my English Literature
degree. I loved this poem so I submitted it to Graffiti Magazine. I couldn’t
believe it the morning I got an email saying that they loved it and wanted to
include it in their next issue!
I also took this one step further. As my poem was all about
chocolate I decided to contact chocolate shops to ask if they wanted to display
my poem. I was over the moon when the first shop agreed, and once again I had
another story that made my local newspaper. It was great publicity for all of us.
To date I have had three chocolate shops agree to display my poem and have even
received free chocolate out of it…bonus!
Well there you have it, those are my two biggest
achievements of 2012. Two dreams I had listed at the start of the year that I
made happen. I still have lots of other projects on the go that I am hoping to
make happen in 2013. I am looking forward to see what the New Year will bring.
Keep chasing your dreams!
