Changing Times

Two years ago I sold my business and retired. I didn't really expect to retire at 66 years old; I had always said I'd keep going until I dropped.However, three things happened to change my mind.

One was realising that we could now do what we had always wanted to do and that was travel around Europe and the Middle East for six months, visiting places like Israel, Italy, Germany, Greece.
Another was renting out our home, which we were uncomfortable leaving empty for such a long period. Our property manager brought along a young couple who had been travelling themselves for the past year and wanted to settle down for a while - as it turned out they were the ideal tenants and after just one meeting we knew instinctively that they were the ones; that we could leave our home with all its contents for them to use and not have to worry. We were right, they never failed us and we felt truly blessed to have them in our home.

Looking down on the harbour of  Santorini Greek island

Thirdly, our contracting business sold within a month so with everything in place, off to Europe we went.

Looking out from the top of Masada Israel

It was a fabulous six months, visiting many exciting and interesting places. For me personally, Israel was the highlight. It was amazing to see places dating back a thousand years to the Crusades; two thousand years to Christ and three thousand years to the birth of Israel.

Jerusalem Israel's Capital

To the modern  day lifestyle with its mixture of the new vibrant city of Tel Aviv and the ancient city of Jerusalem, to the technological advances that have made Israel respected throughout the world. It was truly not a country to miss.

The Austrian Alps

Returning home in the spring of 2012 meant that we were to experience changing times once again. It has ever been mine or my wife's idea to sit around watching TV and waiting for God; we need to be challenged.

My wife was already writing her fourth book under her alias Amelie Rose, and part of our time travelling was so she could research places in France for her latest book and, I believe, the most exciting one to date. It is expected to be released in August.
Her other books, available on Amazon, are - How to Create a Shabby Chic Lifestyle; How to Write Something Interesting; and her fiction novels, Love Child, Mirror Image, and The Duchess' Diary.

For myself, I wanted something completely new, something that would really challenge me so, after a lot of searching, I chose the Internet which, without doubt, is one of the most competitive type of businesses I could have chosen.

I started by making a few web sites, wasting thousands of dollars on mistakes and wrong directions so I then turned to blogging sites, like this one. I was doing well for awhile, raising my position with backlinks and other SEO methods, when for no known reason Google knocked me back by over 20 million places on one blog and over 2 million on another. I felt like giving up. No way would my blogs ever be seen lounging that deep in the mud.

About this time my wife spotted a new website for sale on a auction site. The site was http://mypix.co.nz and it was a shopping site, selling cameras and camcorders. I immediately purchased the site and slightly changed things around using the word mypix, to mean my pick and included electronic gadgets to the existing cameras and camcorders.

My Pix logo and banner

I'm a fan of gadgets, I love them as I know so do a lot of other guys of my vintage. Currently, I'm building the site with products, backlinks, and other SEO means and it's starting to look good. I realise it will take time as the site is only a few months old and hopefully Google will not knock me back again. But then these are changing times and you never know what's going to happen next so I'll just keep on doing the things I need to, to make it a successful site

At the same time I'm enjoying building social media positions on Linkedin ,  Facebook profile, Mypix Twitter profile and youtube and writing e-books on subjects near to my heart, like 'How to Cook Healthy Meals in Minutes,' available on Amazon kindle. My favourite hobby is creating tasty healthy recipes and eating foods that will enhance my health, not harm it like so many of the foods we see in our supermarkets today.

More on  that later...