The Downside of Travel Blogging

If you can’t tell, I LOVE traveling. Friends have the impression that I’m always on a trip! I’m not. Well, not really. I have a day job. After all, I’m out crusading in Texas, defending people’s lives and liberty. Sometimes thankless work, but always stressful work. I find myself wanting to fade into the background A LOT. Stress, stress, stress. Somewhere a long the way, traveling became the thing that grounds me. Why wouldn’t I want to write about it? I decided I wanted to start travel blogging because I needed an outlet. I needed my own escape. This is my proverbial man cave. Yeah, I said it. Deal with it! Anyway…so I come here to do what I like to do best, writing about anything dealing with travel. It makes my heart sing. Read along as I’ve had some epiphanies about blogging and check out some travel pics not released on the blog yet!

I think most people think,” oh, bloggers? They just travel around the world getting free perks everywhere without having to do anything except post some pictures and write up some paragraphs. That’s so easy!” Yeah…nah, son. It’s not even like that. Behind the scenes of that blog you go to and read articles is a blogger who puts a lot of work [read: hours of work] into creating content for you. They’ve spent hours on webinars and trainings to produce the best content. They’ve spent their coins on blogging courses because they want to create a brand worth following. They’ve taken time to learn how to create graphics on Canva to use for Pinterest images. They’ve created social media accounts to promote their brand to a large audience. They’ve spent time building connections and followers across those accounts to help them maybe get to a point where they can start partnering with brand companies to create material for their blog. They start small. They put in the work to grow and improve their blogging skills for a chance to get their unique voice in a sea of people heard, to be visible to large groups of people. There’s nothing easy about that and the road to success is paved with obstacles and learning curves, and road blocks, and even failures.

You know how many times I started and stopped my blogging efforts? A lot. Why? Because it takes a lot of time and effort. I really needed to evaluate why I wanted to blog and what my purpose was. Soul searching, if you will. It was never about getting perks. I just wanted to write. I wanted to be authentic. I wanted to be organic with how I created my content. What does that mean? It means I didn’t want to burnout. I didn’t want my blog to turn into a job I hated and resented. This is supposed to be my outlet! My muse. My go to when everything else in my world seems to be blowing up, burning, and crashing! My zen to the chaos.

I decided to take the whole blogging thing serious back in July of last year. Took a couple blogging courses. I soaked up a lot of information. My first trip after my decision was Cuba. I spent a lot of time on that trip trying to get the perfect angle for pictures. I took a TON of video for vlogging purposes. I had my face behind my camera 90% of the time and I wonder how much I actually stopped to just enjoy BEING in Cuba and absorbing my surroundings. I did the same thing in Costa Rica. I was so worried about capturing and recording enough to have content for the blog. Did I take enough time to enjoy BEING there? I’m not sure if I really did and I want to ENJOY the places I go.

What all goes into this whole blogging thing? Well, I’m glad you asked.

Blood, sweat, and tears, by George!

…okay, that was over dramatic. Seriously, there’s a lot of work that goes into creating a 1,000 word blog post for the masses to critique. For me, I like to have a place in mind of where I want to go, but a lot of times, the flight deals dictate the where. I’m just along for the ride [read: escape]. I would like the whole blogging thing to feel almost voyeuristic. Like someone is watching me while I’m off gallivanting around the world, but doing that in practice is a whole lot more challenging than in thought. Doesn’t mean I can’t strive for that though.

I continue to take classes, courses, and do some light [read: heavy] reading on different topics like taking pictures and what programs to use for editing, etc. Why? Because I want to be and do better. I’m not here to leave trash for you to consume. I want quality because I want to be quality. I hope you’ll stick around with me as the time goes by. I want to share it all with you guys, of course, but I need to live and breathe and be one with where I am. Otherwise, there’s no point for me. People get into blogging for a lot of reasons and those reasons evolve and grow and morph into other things sometimes. Once I knew my why, I became more settled into my writing and also felt less pressured. Because life, y’all. It happens and sometimes I don’t have the amount of time I need to get content together to posts the way I want. Often, I may get 10, 15 minutes around 11:30 at night to work on something for the blog. What that turns into is a post that I wanted to get out there to the masses doesn’t see the light of day for a couple weeks or so. And that’s a drag, until I realized that it’s only a drag because I feel pressured to be on the clock for the blog all the time. And for me and my life, that’s not realistic. I need to do what I can, when I can and that’s how I become more organic in my blogging. That’s how I become more real. I do what I can, when I can. The content will get posted. The pictures will get developed and polished. It will all come together when I don’t force it.

So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the blog! We’ve only just begun, my blog and I, and we’re going to grow together and get better with age and time.