Goodbye 2011 - 2012 Bring It On!

Goodbye 2011 – 2012 Bring it on!

With all the wet weather over the Christmas and New Year holiday period, Raewyn and I have managed to escape our families (and associated cooking, washing and cleaning) and enjoyed several coffees at the Porch Café in Waihi Beach.  Of course, as soon as we are together, we start discussing Wisanow, how it has gone, how it is going and where to from here.

Firstly, thanks to all you wonderful people who subscribed to our site during 2011. We now have 5,000 weekly newsletter subscribers which was our goal at the beginning of the year.  We also want to thank everyone who has contributed to our site this year with your interesting comments on our articles and in the forum.  There has been some healthy discussion on all sorts of subjects from makeovers to healthy eating.

We congratulate the winners of our many competitions and thank everyone else for entering.  We will have lots of competitions again in 2012 so good luck with those too.

We now have several regular contributors to our site and we want to say a very big thank you to you all.  Your articles are so informative and interesting.  Our weekly newsletters would not be the same without your wonderful contributions.

Rae and I were lucky enough to have regular slots on TVNZ Good Morning.  We talked about some very diverse subjects, from Midlife Transition and Reinvention in Women to Men and their Cars after 40.  We will be on Good Morning again this year so let us know if there is anything in particular you want discussed.

On a personal note, 2011 was an interesting year for me in many ways.  My daughter got married in February, which was one of the nicest days of my life so far. 

In May/June I had the difficult job of having to make the decision to move my mother into care, sell her home of 30 years and dispose of her well loved furniture and possessions.  I am very fortunate to have three surviving brothers who were rocks helping with the clean up and shift.  Mum couldn’t make the decision herself, but she has macular degeneration and only has peripheral vision, so living alone was becoming impossible.


Being 94 and having had three falls in 18 months and fracturing her thigh and her pelvis twice, we reluctantly came to the conclusion that she couldn’t look after herself any longer, despite her opinion to the contrary.  It’s taken a few months for her to settle in and of course everything that went wrong was my fault but I’m happy to say she is now settled in and loving it.  She is safe, warm, well looked after and can find her way around without any difficulty on her walking frame. 

So this is the first Christmas in many years that I’ve been able to come to the beach without that guilty feeling that
a) I should have brought her and
b) she would hurt herself or worse



Now to 2012. 
Neither Rae nor I believe the world is going to end this year despite what the doomsayers think, so we have some great plans to take Wisanow forward.  You probably won’t notice the changes particularly, as they will be a rejig rather than a full facelift at this stage.  If you have any ideas you think might be useful please let us know.

We have done our research and now know that our subscribers are really interested in anything to do with Midlife Style, Healthy Living, Travel and Leisure, so we will be focusing on those things this year.

The Wisanow website is our passion and our reason to stay engaged with the world for the next 30 years.  Unfortunately, we now know that statistically we will probably live until we are at least in our 90’s as our mothers did, so we want to make the most of the next 30 years, not slide into old age and obscurity.  Us Baby Boomers have a lot to live for.  We have given our children the best opportunities in life that we could and now it is our turn.  So throw away the guilt and do something for yourselves this year.  You have earned it and deserve it.  Have a wonderful 2012 everyone and make it the best year yet.