Not Just a Granny

So, here I am just under a week since I made the momentous decision to close down my business!   Yesterday morning and this morning I had a major panic-attack…a real wobbly and almost reconsidered the whole thing…..except that of course nothing has changed. The reasons for disconnecting myself from the business of 3 Days in London are still the same and much as I loved my business and loved being identified as 3 Days in London…it became me and I lost myself in the process.

Roughly 4.5 years ago I designed an itinerary for an American friend who was coming to London and wanted my suggestions on what to do with 6 hours in London…Out of that I started a new business called 3 Days in London and spent days and hours in London charting new routes and created 3 full-day itineraries ‘3 Days in London’ that would take in all the top attractions as well as many of the hidden and secret London places that are so amazing and yet so many visitors to our incredible city never get to see. I started a new website, got onto twitter, opened a facebook page, started a pinterest profile, opened a flickr account, got going on instagram soon after it appeared and signed onto so many social media platforms that I totally lost count. After years of steadily tweeting, blogging and posting photos and providing what I hoped was interesting information about the city; the history, hidden places, events, races and exhibitions I started to get invitations to Press Previews….. finally I was being noticed and was now going to the openings of new exhibitions…wow!!!   I can’t tell you how delighted and thrilled and amazed I was when I got my first invitation: to the opening of a new exhibition at the Tower of London.

Around the same time I created and had an App built….it was/is great. To date there have been almost 3,000 downloads and of course bearing in mind it’s free to download, it was still exciting nonetheless to see the download numbers creeping up!

I adore London; it really was my passion and of course having learned via the Personal Development journey I was on in 2007/2008 that to start a business by doing what you loved was the best way to ‘Turn Passion into Profit’ (I am part quoting the title of a book by Christopher Howard) I decided to turn my love of London into a business. However….and this is a big however….that did not happen. I got so wrapped up in trying to be the ‘google of London’ that although my love for London never waned, my passion has.

I’ve seen the Queen and the Royal Family, been at the Royal Wedding, the Diamond Jubilee, was at the gate of Buckingham Palace when our future king was born

watched numerous Trooping the Colour events, been rowed along the Thames in the beautiful Trinity Tide (the 1st),

participated in the Tudor Pull twice, stood on the Gloriana (a highlight), been to watch the arrival of ‘The First Georgian king’,

climbed the O2, been up the Orbit and had numerous rides on the London Eye and walked 80% of the streets, courts and lanes in the City of London.

I’ve climbed The Monument (3 times), climbed to the Golden Gallery of St Paul’s (5 or 6 times) & the tower of Westminster Cathedral, been up The Shard, down the Tube (travelled on every line and visited nearly all the stations),

I’ve sailed down the Thames in various craft including a tall-ship, and over the Thames in the cable car, walked beneath the Thames via the Greenwich tunnel and tramped along the beaches wherever possible. I’ve been to both the London locks, walked across every bridge from Hampton Court to Tower Bridge, watched all the river races, explored and investigated nooks and crannies, learned to drink a lager: London Pride (go figure hahahaha) and pulled a pint at The George Inn.

I became a tad obsessed with trying to see and do EVERYTHING, and go everywhere; visit every palace (which I have done), explore every historical house (still a few to go), attend every exhibition, every attraction, visit every ‘views of London’ (I’ve done most), visit all the churches in City of London and Westminster and many more besides (only a few to go), all the parks (still many to go), all the events (been to all the annual ones!!).

I’ve seen the Lord Mayor’s Show (5 times), and watched the fireworks at the London Eye at 5 New Year’s nights and stayed out all night in 2014, seen the tree being switched on in Trafalgar Square. I’ve tried to visit every hidden place, every secret place, visit all the famous cemeteries (3 to go), go on as many tours of different areas as possible, learn about the many kings and queens, about the famous

and infamous people who had shaped the city and all this while taking thousands of photos – to date I have over 60,000!!   Ironically I missed quite a lot of the events taking place in front of me in my endeavour to capture the ‘perfect’ photo or the ‘best’ video to share, to share them without overwhelming the social media platforms….all this while trying to blog about everything I had done, update the App (which, like a baby, needs constant attention) and still work and have a life…..in the process I forgot about me, in my desire to do everything and to share everything I knew about the city I exhausted myself, sometimes staying up till 3am in the morning and back at my desk by 6am setting tweets, updating the blog (some posts took anything up to 8 hours to craft in my need to have the full and correct information), editing and uploading photos etc etc etc…..London is such an amazing place and I became quite obsessed with trying to make sure that I didn’t miss anything (not possible) and share everything…..which of course is impossible.

I tried to learn about SEO, key words and phrases, back-links, how to craft a blog to make it interesting, I bought books and downloaded ‘useful information’, I gathered boxes and boxes of flyers, leaflets, brochures all carefully collated into categories and alphabetical order for easy access when doing research, and dozens of books on London – all this stuff, except for the books, are now in the recycling bin along with a little bit of my heart!! 😦

I downloaded articles on how to write a Press release, how to do this, how to do that, what to do and what not to do when writing a blog…..gahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!! I tried to figure out the best time to send tweets, to update the facebook page, upload photos to pinterest, when was the best time to post a blog…..and on and on and on……the ‘experts’ all had an idea of what/when/how was best…and I had no idea who was the best expert.

Amongst all this madness I decided to redesign my website; to make it into a super duper resource….a place where people could visit and easily find out everything (almost) there is to do and see in the city. Lists of things to do, places to visit, Top attractions, what to see, museums and galleries, churches, places, parks and gardens and squares, annual events and and and….lists and lists and more lists…..you don’t want to miss a thing!   One thing about me….I LOVE lists!!!  I have spent months and months researching, learning and crafting interesting and useful (I hope) articles for the website….all of which I would now have said is wasted time….

I met with the website designer at the beginning of the year and the first draft was beautiful..I got so excited. Now I would be able to confidently upload the itineraries I had created 4 years ago (nope, I had not yet put them up…despite walking them a number of times and having other people test them for me, lack of confidence stopped me at every turn, what if the information that was on the itinerary was incorrect!! What if they didn’t like them). I planned that once the website was completed I would approach possible sponsors for the App etc. I wanted to be taken seriously, to have a professional website, to show I was serious. So when things started to go awry with the development of the new website, I started to get concerned. Time and months went by with no indication of when it would be ready…finally I started to put the pressure on. I eventually got a link, clicked on it and was sent to a porn site….apparently my new website along with 4 others had been hacked. I won’t go into the subsequent details except to say that by now my confidence in the end result was beginning to wane….why didn’t the developer have sufficient security?

After many emails and phone calls, many of which went unanswered and quite a few months went by, I finally got a link to the site……suffice to say I was dismayed…I was shocked at quite frankly what looked to me like something that had hastily been cobbled together to meet my demands (after nearly 7 months) and in that split second I was…right that’s it!!! I’ve had enough. I’m out!!!!

There was so much that was fundamentally wrong and although my initial list of errors only took into account the big stuff I had discovered that was incorrect, the fact that the name of the company had been spelled incorrectly in not one but two places really upset me a lot…..the response I got from the developer of ‘quick fix’ or ‘easy change’ just didn’t after all cut the mustard. This had come right on top of the double whammy of the day before and I really just couldn’t take it in. I didn’t want to see so many errors on what really should have been a professional presentation…..TIME to quit!

The reality is that I am a very small fish in the very big London pond….there are HUGE London websites that employ dozens of people to research, report and update their websites….the enormity of what I was trying to do finally hit me square between the eyeballs….my love-affair was over.    Not with London, but with the business of London.

I had lost my passion for the city, I was exhausted with trying to be everywhere and do everything and tweet, instagram, facebook, flickr, pinterest and write about it. I was tired of trying to get stats that I needed, to learn about the different platforms that keep changing their algorithms, facebook changed theirs so often I got heart-palpitations trying to keep up….. and layouts; don’t even talk to me about layouts!!!…I got heartily sick of logging onto a platform that I had used just the day before and the whole appearance had changed and I had to learn all over again where to find things. I seriously believe that the developers are too clever for their own good and should not be allowed anywhere near the platform once it’s done! I got fed up with all the spam that appeared on my blog every day (despite having akismet installed), with nasty people making shitty comments or complaining about my tweets on twitter, or spending hours editing and uploading photos, or creating videos and only 5 or 6 people even liked them. I also had to tackle bloody Windows 8 along the way after my previous computer crashed and I had to get a new one…it has also cost me a lot financially. I had to stop and really question why I was still doing this.

On the plus side, I did get to conduct a few guided walks with groups of people, bespoke walks that were fun to research, fun to plan and in reality quite tiring to do. I was terrified that they would get injured in some or another way while on the walk with me and frankly even having insurance doesn’t cover that stress. I’ve written a short story…my great Victorian novel I like to call it…LOL in reality it’s a short story, but it was fun to write and I actually sold quite a few, I’ve created 2 blurb books, one my daughter made for me out of some of my more interesting blogs and one I made for a friend who visited Twickenham, and I have been to so many places, seen so many amazing things, visited so many fantastic venues and attended some brilliant events and exhibitions. I have connected with some absolutely wonderful people along the way… some from as far away as Russia and Ukraine, Toronto in Canada, Texas, California, Florida, and other American states; some of whom I have actually met, many of whom have become very very good friends 😉 as well as wonderful people from the UK and London.  These are just a few of the wonderful people I have met….

 

On this amazing journey I discovered that not only was Queen Lizzie’s birthday close to mine, but my birthday falls on St George’s Day and I share the same birth date as Shakespeare!!  How cool is that!

I have learned so much about the history of this great city, the greatest city on the planet in my humble opinion, that I can only look back with great joy at all I have done and the people I have met and I can tell you one thing for sure….okay make that two things…I Love London, that will never wane and I know more about this city than I know about ANYTHING else on the planet!!!

I LOVE London, but, I am no longer trying to be ‘google for London…..’