So much of Experience Something New is focused on what we have learned through our journey as a family, but we also want to help people do exactly what the name of the site says. Through our advice and the contributions we receive from the site’s community we hope to inspire others to consider new experiences, but we also want to talk about what we have planned and what we want to achieve as a family in the future, as well as what we have done in the past or are doing right now.
Here’s a few of the things that we hope to accomplish together in the near-future. Who knows? You may just see a few articles on our blog talking about these adventures in a few months’ time.
My Professional Life
Before we get started with some of the fun things we want to do as a family, I thought I’d reflect back on the changes this site has led to in my professional life. What started out as a little bit of fun for us has turned into a true community of people and, if I may say so myself, a rather impressive little business.
While I will still aim to work in online marketing as I always have, helping my clients to achieve the sort of success that this site has enjoyed, a number of aspects of my professional life have changed thanks to this site. We are now able to make a little money from it, without compromising the core values that have defined Experience Something New from the start.
What we hope now is that we can continue growing our audience and provide even more information and advice to visitors old and new. In doing so, we will also be working closely with more businesses to help them advertise their services to our audience, assuming those services meet our own standards in terms of what the businesses offer.
The Kids
Our children have grown so much since we first started this site. Maggi has just entered her teens and the boys aren’t too far behind her, and we are working hard as a family to evolve as they develop.
What we hope for the future is to get them more involved with Experience Something New and perhaps turn the site into something of a family business. They have all enjoyed contributing their ideas to the posts we have written on the site as they have grown up and their antics have made for some wonderful reading over the years, but now we are thinking about what they may be able to offer in their own words.
In the future we may look to include a section into the site or blog covering family issues from a younger point of view. If the kids do want to get involved with something like that, we think it may give both out audience and ourselves even more insight into what it is actually like to grow up in today’s world.
Of course, we won’t be pushing them in this direction. It’s more of a thought that we have currently that we are thinking of broaching with them. Watch this space, because you may be seeing more from Maggi, Brendon and Tom in the future.
Our Travels
I have always placed great importance on the idea of helping the kids see more of the world and other cultures than it would be possible to see if we stayed holed up in Baltimore our entire lives. Ann enjoyed a wonderful year away from college, before we met, where she had the opportunity to tour Europe and she is looking forward to the prospect of sharing what she experienced back then with our kids.
We have Berlin, Paris and London as must-see destinations over the coming years and we are sure that each will offer our family the chance to build even stronger bonds and learn more about how others live their lives.
We won’t be forgetting about the United States though. Both Ann and I have always held a desire to visit one place in this country that we never got to see when we were children – Disney World.
At some point next year we hope to make that dream a reality. More importantly to us, we will be doing it while the kids are still at an age where they can really enjoy the magic that the place has to offer. They don’t know just yet and I can’t wait to get it all booked and see their faces when we tell them.
Ann’s Plans
Now that the kids are getting a little older and a touch more independent, Ann is thinking more and more about returning to school. We both completed our Bachelor’s degrees while studying in Philadelphia, but Ann has always had that thirst for knowledge that drives her towards wanting to learn even more.
After we started our family she put those ambitions on the backburner a little bit so that we could focus on raising our children and ensuring they had everything they need to develop and enjoy their lives. However, now they are at an age where independence is becoming increasingly available to them, she is looking into potential opportunities to continue to move forward with her education and earn the Master’s degree in Art History that she has always wanted. She is even talking about possibly completing her Doctoral studies in the subject as well.
I’m really looking forward to taking that one forward, because Ann has sacrificed so much for our family, and Experience Something New, and she deserves to explore her own passions now that the path is more open to her. Hopefully I’ll be able to call her Ann Goodwin, PhD. sometime in the future.
So there are just a few of our long and short-term plans for the future. Of course, we never quite know what the future will actually bring, but with a little bit of luck we may see all of these come to fruition while we move forward as a family.