I believe life is not a dress rehearsal. We owe it to ourselves to always try to live our dream and overcome lifestyle challenges as they arise.

I believe I have a way of achieving this and this is really what About-Me is all about!

When I look at other websites built by friends and colleagues, the About-Me page seems to be the hardest to write. I can't include a photo as I hate having mine taken - I was going to put one of the dog on About-Me - she is very good looking!

The question we all ask is....

"Who would want to know about my personal challenge or lifestyle dream?"

Anyway, here goes.........................

I had worked all my life in the travel industry. This meant we went on great holidays, stayed in lovely hotels, in glorious locations and had a great time.

The lifestyle was good, our house was lovely but after years and years I wanted a bit more, actually I wanted a lot more.

My heart has always been in nature.

During these times we also had really fabulous holidays in the New Forest.

I had always loved, passionately, horses, ponies, nature and wildlife. Every time we went away to the New Forest, in our caravan for heavens sake!, I found I felt really at home and didn't want to return to our old lifestyle.

A natural response to a New Forest holiday really.

An owl might swoop and hoot overhead, or a New Forest pony would whinny in the distance or a cow moo softly at its wandering calf. (There's quite a lot of mooing going on as I'm writing this)!

We often checked house prices with friends when staying in the New Forest but it really was just a dream, a lifestyle we didn't think we could achieve....

"If we won the lottery we'd buy that New Forest cottage". Just the way you do dream on holiday.

Then a series of lifestyle challenge events happened.

My travel job was making me extremely stressed and I couldn't cope. I was becoming physically ill through stress.

It took me a year of total stress to work out that if I left, my lifestyle would not grind to a halt - in fact, by now it was crucial that I did leave.

I looked for the least stressful job, at the bottom of the career pile, which offered no challenge, and when it was offered took it!

I've always wanted to learn what was going on in my head when a challenge arose, so I decided to study stress and why it had had such a huge effect on me.

This lead to me to doing Stress Presentations in companies and also building my own stress awareness website.

It was a truly cathartic time.

My father became seriously ill and my husband was made redundant! We also had teenage issues going on, but who doesn't?

We decided that now was the time to make the lifestyle change and try to find a house in the New Forest

We thought we had sold our house, and as the buyers were so keen, we rented a thatched New Forest cottage, whilst we looked for a property we could afford in an area of the New Forest we wanted to live in.

We signed on the dotted line for 6 months, which would give us ample time to find somewhere, whilst the house sale went through.

The house sale fell through!

I now had even more stress than before! Everything was in turmoil - my dad was dying, my husband couldn't find work and we had to put the house back on the market and find a property we could afford.

House prices in the New Forest were getting out of our price bracket.

I knew every house on the market, and also through a network of contacts, what was likely or about to come up.

Close friends said I would have to give up my dream - after all West Sussex was really nice! I didn't want Sussex - my dream was the New Forest

Would we have to give up our dream? Would this be one lifestyle challenge too much?

My husband had spent many happy childhood years in the New Forest.

We had spent years and years visiting and loving it more and more each trip.

And were desperately trying to make the move, live the dream and face the lifestyle challenge head on.

Our rented New Forest cottage, as I have said, was thatched. It was a bit of a pile.

You couldn't run a bath without risking falling through the partially rotting floor.

A rat had got in and died next to a hot water pipe, so we had to take up the floor in a storage part of the roof to find it's putrid little body - oh the joys of country living!

We vowed we would definitely NOT be buying a thatched cottage as part of our lifestyle dream - definitely not!

Then we saw a Grade 11 Listed thatched cob cottage, in an area we didn't think we wanted to live on the New Forest,... and bought it!

My husband has just read this and said, "How did we survive?"

If you would like to hear more of my New Forest Life Tales then just subscribe to my monthly ezine by filling in the box below. There is an update to this lovely photo as Mama Pig as we knew her is no more! A very sad time.

I believe you have to keep moving forward ...

believe in that dream....

take a lifestyle challenge, whatever it is....

and face it head on.

I've always been quite an impatient person (ask my husband), if it wasn't happening I would try to make it happen.

With this particular lifestyle challenge I really had to learn patience. But more importantly, never give up the dream.

Until we lived on the New Forest properly I don't think we realised just how special it is, to us.

Other times the owls have a good old hoot in the Oak trees in the wood opposite. New Forest ponies whinny and birds wake us - maybe this is sounding like a nightmare to the town dweller?

However, most nights we have total silence. The starry sky is spectacular. We walk the dog on winter nights and share all the sounds of nature and see deer in our torch light scurrying away or if we are lucky just stopping in their tracks and staring at us. Sometimes the biggest challenge is not to walk into a grazing cow or New Forest pony in the pitch dark!

It is the animals and wildlife together with the wonderful places to visit and explore that I want to share with you.

It's all here for me to share with you and this is why my website is being built.

I am doing something I truly love, I am living my dream, and I will share it with you, through my website and About-Me. (I hope to update the About-Me page as things progress).

We're working harder than ever before now we are living in the New Forest to support the new lifestyle...and we're getting too old!

Time to follow another dream I think! Face another lifestyle challenge

What is the worst thing about doing a day job? I've thought really seriously about this....

• Getting to work - traffic, bus journey - do you feel like a little hampster on a wheel?
• Not enjoying your job - how many people go to work and love their job?
• Are you working for idiots? Not appeciated, overworked or bullied? It happens!
• Is your life draining away - fast! Each day I have a bad day I think at the end of my life I may want that wasted day back! - now we're really getting maudlin!
• Do work to live or live to work?

We have sat together in bed at night, in the wonderful New Forest, and questioned What on earth are we doing?
Was this lifestyle challenge worth all this hard work now?

Let's turn it around: we're in a terrible credit crunch, the economy is in a nose dive. People are losing their homes as they struggle to pay their mortgage. Lifestyle changes and challenges are happening to people during this awful time of recession.

The bottom line is....We're both lucky to have jobs however hard we're working. That doesn't mean we have to lie back and not try to make changes.

Live the full dream - be financially independent! I may even end up, if successful with my website, working harder than at my day job. If this happens I will be ecstatic!!!! Why? Because I would be making a living from something I LOVE and feel passionate about - what a reward. And that alarm clock will be set by me!

I'm looking for personal growth, in an area where I can be self reliant, in which I hope to achieve financial liberation.

My web site is mine, my own business, and all of it, every last bit has come from my own thoughts and experiences, here in the New Forest.

I've loved every minute of it and can share some success stories with you of others who are on a similar journey to me - see what you think. case studies About-Me isn't going into massive detail about web site building. BUT I think it is a wonderful self help e business. New Forest Life site is put together step by easy step by Site Build It or SBI. It was devised and is run by a man called Ken Evoy.

Ken is wonderful. When I did my stress website I think my husband got a little jealous of "Ken" and the volume of helpful and informative emails I was receiving from SBI. Not now. This time round he is with me all the way, shares my passion and has helped me to build my New Forest site.

You can take a video tour
Or if you're on dial up and learn more.

Yes it is self help but it is also real, honest Net education.
You can also do it as an e-course, from the New Forest, like me or anywhere in the world. Find out more about the e course

Perhaps reading all this you now think - good heavens, I could never do that? Well there is a dedicated e-learning questions page, so you can ask whatever may be worrying you about creating your site, like I have. Give it a go - you've nothing to lose.

Maybe you can reset your own alarm clock too one day..?

What really amazes me is that I really have no time for computers and usually find them quite a challenge. At work they have always been a means to an end but over the last few months I have had a real buzz from building page after page and adding my own photos and all the New Forest lifestyle information I want to share with you.

Ken is so great he even lets you have your money back if you want - now my husband really is getting jealous!!!

There's great news if you are not too sure about committing to the full year at SBI (although you do get a money back guarantee!)....

Now, for a limited time, you can try it out by paying monthly. What have you got to lose? If you're like me, you'll find your passion and there'll be no stopping you!

GOOD LUCK
Are you tempted to dip your feet in the water of your very own website?

Here's your chance to Ask a question or more.... from knowledgeable and supportive people have already built a successful website and have far more knowledge and answers than I'll ever have! But all I want to do is have a great lifestyle in this beautiful New Forest UK National Park - what have you got to lose???

As I try to build more interest into my New Forest life website I'll be experimenting with different products on the market.

Here's the latest one I'm trying.

About-Me is how I'm trying to build a better life for us. I've met and conquered the first lifestyle challenge - we're living, very happily, in the beautiful New Forest

I did that and now I'm going to share my passion and knowledge of this beautiful place, the New Forest, on my New Forest Life website and be financially independent (oh and dump my day job eventually!). I am living the dream and have achieved my lifestyle challenge - face on!

Perhaps you could too?

Now you've read my About-Me page and shared my New Forest lifestyle challenge (and future, ongoing challenges)- you will hopefully have seen that the New Forest is my dream.

I realise I am very lucky.

If you have further questions or information after reading About-Me I'd love to hear from you.

Do you have stress issues in your life? Are you facing a lifestyle challenge of your own?

( I also need to confirm that I DO NOT pass on email addresses or information you may provide me with to any other third party or organisation via New Forest Life.com. )

If you want to search New Forest Life.com without using the navigation bars on the left, then here's a really useful Google tool. Just put your search details e.g. pigs in the search box and hit Search and you can choose to search my site or go onto the Web and come back to NewForest-Life.com.

Custom Search

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