Dear Lovely Readers, this is my Christmas Card to you…

Happy Christmas everyone and I’m looking forward to connecting with you in 2014!

In January I started this blog. I’ll admit that I was really reluctant to start a blog, I found the idea incredibly stressful and nerve wracking; What if people were mean to me, hiding behind their online identities? Did I really have anything of value to add to the wealth of information already available online? Richard Bilkey, an awesome bloke who helped me tremendously in those early days seemed to think I did and he pushed me forward, telling me it was crucial for my career as a writer! “It’s what you do, isn’t it?” He asked, “You write!” Thanks Richard. You were right.

Well, I obliged begrudingly and started documenting my first ever community health campaign: Stop Gastro Spread! My Hand-Washing at School project soon followed and by then, the creative nursey-beast was well and truly unleashed.

I began to discover how liberating it felt to be able to write my thoughts and ideas and publish them for me, and me alone! For the first time, I didn’t feel I had to write a piece to ‘fit in’ with the agenda of a magazine or website I was being hired to write for. I stopped feeling a sense of frustration when an important topic popped into my head that I knew wouldn’t have an outlet that would be interested in publishing it. The more I wrote, the more I found I wanted to write about. The more hits my posts got, the more encouraged I was to keep writing!

My site stats are very modest, in the grand cyber world of things ‘going viral’ Nurse Naomi is as small and as unimportant as a grain of sand on the beach. I once proudly relayed my 8 months grand total of hits to an internet guru and I heard him almost choke – and this wasn’t because he was impressed. BUT:

I didn’t care! I am impressed with where Nurse Naomi has gone and all I can say is  – without sounded too mushy and soppy –  that it’s all thanks to YOU! My lovely readers who take the time to click on the link when I publish it, who take a few seconds to hit a like button, or even better to share it – it’s thanks to YOU that Nurse Naomi has gone from being a nothing to – what I think – a relatively big something, for me! Nurse Naomi is being read, for now, what more could I want? Looking back on the hits this year makes me very proud but also very humbled that you have spent your time and attention reading me.

OK…Soppy stuff is over, but the Thank You remains! I’d love your support over the next year and I hope that Nurse Naomi will continue to grow, little by little…and of course that my Mega Massive Book Deal will happen too – but that’s another story…

Have a Happy, Healthy Christmas!

Love Nurse Naomi xx