This post marks eight years of writing online, otherwise known as blogging. I didn’t think much of really taking my blog far at the beginning (and I still kinda don’t) but it has served as a good benchmark for both my travels and my life in general over the last eight years. You see, I started a blog one year after I started my initial jaunt abroad (in 2009). Although I did keep a journal before this blog appeared, I never dared to publish anything figuring it was what other people do. “You have to learn how to write first” is usually what I was told (and am still told that by some people who haven’t even read my stuff). In any event, in case you were wondering, this is what the blog first looked like so many years ago:
Wooo. That is one sweet looking blog! Notice the “thinking pic”, the Flickr stream, the ads for WordPress, and the very centralness of the entire thing. So… 2010. Haha. They were truly simpler times!
I started my blog at a pivotal point in the blogosphere, what I call the 2nd generation of bloggers. The first would’ve been around the year 2000, just when the internet started taking shape and a few people started blogs about their travels but most were still able to publish in actual magazines and papers. Then 2008 happened and a bunch of people got laid off and so many of them figured travelling was a solution. But travelling wasn’t good enough and so they tried monetizing their websites so that they could keep travelling. For some it worked, for many it didn’t. If you look at most blogs, especially travel blogs, many of them got their start in or around 2007/2008. Many were able to keep going for a few years (usually five) and then stopped publishing, often because they got jobs that paid waaay more than blogging does.
I’m somewhere in between. I still blog but not nearly as much about travel-related stuff any more. Moreover, I don’t depend on any website for my income. Nope. But I do still work and live overseas. I still try to publish here at least once a month to keep some sort of continuity going but gone are the days of me trying to monetize this thing so I can keep living out of a backpack in some developing country.
Sadly, there are a few gaps in my publishing, notably the first six months of 2012 where I went to Australia for a working holiday visa and couldn’t muster the energy to publish anything. There are also trips I’ve taken that I haven’t yet published, namely the Philippines, Japan, and the Trans-Siberian Railway. I mean, I did write something about them but just haven’t published them.
This blogging journey hasn’t been fruitless, far from it. Though I haven’t earned anything from this blog, I have learned quite a bit about how writing/blogging/publishing works, advertising, marketing, and stream-lining content production, especially in regard to photos and videos. Not only that, along the way I have started other blogs or sites and have written for other websites too, but I’ve never really been interested in really growing my readership for this site. This blog, as it stands, has acted more like something I’d like to look back on in fifty years rather than try to grow into a business right at this moment.
Why didn’t I monetize it? I did try, but I was terrible at it. The big problem about monetizing a blog and turning it into a business is that it consumes your life and I didn’t like that at all. I hated that I had to sit in front of a computer all day (not making money yet spending money on coffee and food at whatever cafe) while I could be out there on the road. I mean, I had a desk job before I travelled and the entire point was to get away from the desk, not bring it with me!
Anyway, this blog has seen me through eight years of travel including my initial trip through Southeast Asia (2010); working for my uncle on his farm (2010 and 2011); visiting my Homelands of Poland and Ukraine (2011); it missed much of Australia and a return to Southeast Asia (2012-2013) but did see quite a few posts about teaching ESL in that same time (2013); China Part 1 (2014-2017); the passing of my father (2017); and my return to China (2017).
Though I’m aware of the costs of maintaining this site and the current lack of financial return, this blog has pushed me to write and publish more, to explore more in pursuit of a good story, and, in some ways, to keep travelling if not for myself, but as a record of how things stand in our times. Yes, it sounds a little bit over the top but, being a student of history, I do appreciate how one person’s effort now can be hugely appreciated later on when they are gone. I’m not asking for tributes here, no, it’s just a thought that keeps me going on slow days.
I leave you with a screen shot of a record of posts over this blog’s life. Something to be framed I’m sure! 😀
