As hinted in my 2018 travel recap, 2019 will bring some changes to this site and my travel lifestyle. For the first time in a long time, This Life in Trips will be all about Part-Time Travel. Although this will mean fewer trips overall, I’m excited about taking a new (or at least optically new) direction. Let me explain what this means.
In This Post...
Evolution or Devolution?
This site, my love of travel, and writing all about it started back in 2006. That was the year I first put my life on hold and travelled full-time. I documented my drunken debauchery and new world discoveries as a way to stay connected with family and friends. That’s it.
I kept this hobby up until making the decision in 2013 to shift gears and write articles and posts encouraging others to travel more. This was in preparation for a trip around the world in 2014. After that, I started writing travel itineraries, reviews, and how-tos. This meant getting away from a personal blog and shifting to a part-time business.
That all lead up to 2015 where I once again decided to travel full time, this time as a digital nomad. That is where the story has, more or less, left off. The truth is, I stopped travelling full-time in early 2016 and I have never really addressed it on my site until now. This is because of a few reasons:
1) So Much Content, So Little Time
Travelling straight for that long meant that I had accumulated a lot of content to share. Not posting multiple times a week, a blogging resolution I made a couple of years back, meant that the content I had accumulated went a long way. Coupled with a full-time job, getting it all out has been a challenge.
2) I’m Still Moving
On top of the backlog, I have managed to maintain a steady flow trips. Along with those trips came more commitments and content to share.
3) Living or Losing the Dream?
Lastly, I have never really addressed the fact that I am no longer travelling full-time as it felt, in some weird way, like I have failed or quit.
It often feels like travelling full-time is the only way to stay relevant and interesting in the now-massive travel blogging world. Although unintentional, part of me felt like if I never addressed stopping full-time travel optically it would seem like I was still living the dream. In reality, that dream died.
Positives in Part-Time Travel
This admission, of course, shouldn’t be treated as a failure. It certainly isn’t all doom and gloom. In the last couple of years of part-time travel, I’ve managed to see and do a ton. I’ve gone on several sponsored trips as well as maintained this site as a part-time business. All of this while not only holding down a full-time job but succeeding at it.
This made me think, why wouldn’t I want to share this success with my readers? Surely others would want to know how to see the world without having to sell everything you own and save up for five years.
Well, 2019 is the year just for that.
New Beginnings…Coming Mid-2019
To kick off this new direction I will start with a slight rebrand of this site. My about page, for example, hasn’t been updated in years.
After some house cleaning, I will share stories like how I was able to pull off travelling full-time in the first place. Then there is how I was able to maintain these trips while holding down a full-time job, one that saw me promoted shortly after travelling for 15 months straight. Who does that?
All of that said, I have a ton of content to get through from an amazing trip to India, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives first. This backlog goes to show the struggles that I have had the past couple of years maintaining this site and a full-time job and the effect it has had on me. My work-life-work balance has been a challenge, to say the least…but we’ll dig into all of that soon enough. Until then, I’ll be at home in Vancouver 😉
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