A Decade of This Blog

I’ve decided to start something new on my blog, a journal, a space where I can write freely and creatively, without worrying about SEO or best practice or anything else.

Somewhere where I can share my adventures and thoughts on places and things without trying to make it perfect for Google or Pinterest, or whatever. Where I don’t give a second thought to bad grammer or poorly constructed sentences or thoughts.

It’s all going in here. I don’t expect this will bring many readers, but that’s not the point. The point is to bring my spark back.

There’s nothing like the holiday season and the upcoming new year to make you rethink your life. I know you can do that any time of year, but there’s nothing quite like this time of year to really kick you in the butt for change.

So, without further ado, here are some really honest and raw thoughts on a decade of blogging.

This is my 10th year with this blog

Whoof, ten years.

I often feel I’ve gone too slow, that other people who started around the same time (or, shutter, way after) as me actually have established blogs, they travel for work or are full-time bloggers because of it, and are able to put out lots of posts and have a whole community.

After a decade doing this, I feel like I should, too, but I don’t. Not even close. It’s only in the last couple of years I’ve met local creators (which has been amazing!), but that’s all been through social media.

The truth is that I’ve spent a lot of time doing unnecessary things to this blog, like changing the theme about a million times, because that’s what I’m good at. I’m a web developer and graphic designer as my day job, which makes it easy for me to focus on the design and technical details over building a community or a consistent posting schedule.

With a decade in this and (what feels like) not a lot to show for it, it makes me feel like I’ve wasted a lot of time and energy on something that’s only slightly paying off. I’ve spent way more money on this blog than I’ve ever made from it.

I’ve spent years only publishing a few posts a year. I’ve been doing this for a decade and only have 100 posts, and of those, only a handful that people even read. I’ve been at the mercy of the Google gods and seriously thought about throwing it all away in 2024 when Google tanked almost all my articles (thankfully, they’ve come back). That often feels like a failure.

I’m not trying to be negative, I’m usually a very upbeat person, but something about hitting 10 years doing this hits different.

It feels like I need to make this work, or give it up.

So I’ve chosen to make it work. I’m done only half-assing it, half-assing my social media presence, my collab outreach, my posting schedule, building my community. I’ve wanted to make this work for 10 years, and there’s no reason I can’t.

I started this blog in 2016

It feels insane to write that. Are we sure that’s right? (Technically, it went live in 2017, but I’d spent about a year prior working on drafts and building it).

Over those years, it’s felt like there’s always been something to take my focus off this.

In that time I’ve moved from an apartment to a house, had roommates and tenants, had my house catch fire and lose almost everything (which resulted in moving 4x in less than two years), turned 30 and moved back in with my parents, bought another apartment, left my stable job and started a business, been the breadwinner as my husband’s in school, traveled and hiked so many places I’ve never talked about on here (or barely on social media), done numerous renovations, adopted two feral cats, got engaged and married, and about a million other things I can’t even think of right now.

And that’s normal life. Things like that will always happen. We want kids in the next few years which will easily pull me away from this even more if I don’t make a solid effort.

But I can’t let normal life keep taking away from my dreams

Even my business. It sounds fancy on paper, saying I’ve been self-employed for 6 years, but I only started that because I wanted out of my old job and kept doing the same work. I didn’t fundamentally change much and I often feel like I’m still an employee, which isn’t a great feeling.

I don’t feel like I have much control over my work life and haven’t been able to scale up my income much. I struggle with charging what I’m worth or increasing prices.

And I’m tired of making websites. It’s easy work for me and we’ve been lucky that it’s been able to pay the bills for almost 6 years now, but I’m over it. It’s time for change.

As a side note, I felt like a failure when we had to sell our house after the fire and all we could afford was an apartment. Don’t get me wrong, I’m incredibly grateful and happy we were able to even buy another place given everything, but it did hurt. It felt like going backwards. No one made us feel that way, except my internal guilt.

So all that to say, it’s time for me to stop half-assing my life and really go for what I want.

All that to say, I’m excited for this new series I’m bringing to the blog

This is obviously super different from my regular articles, so I totally get if you don’t like it. But it feels therapeutic to me and I hope it’ll let us get to know each other a little more.

You’ll find all my ramblings under the “Journal” category. That’s where I’ll share my unpolished writing and thoughts.

Most of the time, it’ll be way more about our travel than this article, but not always. It’s where I hope to bring back my creative spark, to make it easier to post regularly and make this whole blog thing work. Because I really do love it, but I need a change.

And I hope this is it.

PS: It only took me about 15 minutes to write this. Most blog posts take 10-15+ hours. Yes, this is significantly less polished than my actual guides, but this was fun and freeing. I can’t wait to write about my actual adventures in this style and I hope you’ll enjoy them. But even if you don’t, I’ll keep at it.