I thought I wanted to be a Travel Blogger, but I don't...

Image of a woman wearing red tee shirt from behind walking through an Asian market

I’d spent years swooning over travel blogs.

I was envious and badly wanted to be a travel blogger.

Why? Well surely it’s obvious isn’t it?

I’d travel the world, writing about the must see destinations. I’d eat in great cafes and restaurants, stay in great places…and maybe I’d even get paid for doing so!

I love travelling so surely writing about travelling must be a dream come true.

I’d toyed with the idea of creating my own ‘travel blog’ for several years. But I had many excuses – I was too busy, I wasn’t technical, nobody would read my posts, I was worried about what people would think – you name it I had excuses.

Finally, during the pandemic, there were no more excuses – time was on my side and it was now or never. I enrolled on Nomadic Matt’s Super Star Travel Blogging course and started the up hill slog of creating my very own website.

Wahoo!

That was three years ago and here’s what I learnt – I don’t enjoy travel blogging.

By this, I mean the type of travel blogging where you visit lots of interesting places, compile them into a Top 10, explain transport options and so on.

I thought it would be my passport to the world. And yet I realised that feeling compelled to write about my travel experiences, just doesn’t get me excited!

I’ll hasten to add that this is just me and who I am. I know there are some great travel bloggers out there who do a fantastic job and hats off to them. I read and use travel blogs when I’m travelling all the time, and they’re a valuable source of information. I also now realise from my forays into blogging about travel, that it’s no walk in the park, it’s hard work and to do it properly requires a LOT of energy and motivation. I imagine that if you’re doing it as your main income, you really need to put in a lot of hours, so I have a great deal of respect for people who do it really well.

I also feel there a distinct difference between a travel writer and a travel blogger, with travel writing being more akin to the type of in depth stories you might find in the National Geographic. Someone who does a brilliant job of providing compelling travel stories in the format of a blog, is Priyanka from On My Canvas. As a full time writer, she devotes her life to writing and her articles seep soul. When I read her posts, I’m like, I want to write like that…!

laptop with travel Blog on the screen — Travel blogging is hard work!

Here’s why Travel Blogging Isn’t For Me:

I’m a lazy traveller!

Maybe it’s my age, I’m on the brink of 50, perimenopausal and my energy seems to be riding a rollercoaster. I have so little interest in bopping around all over the place in search of tourist attractions and it makes me want to take a nap just thinking about it.

I was asked recently in an interview what my travel bliss was – my answer was to settle in a location, to find myself within that location and become a part of the flow of life within a place.

My travel bliss comes when I go to the local market to buy food, without any desire to snap away on my camera. It comes from smiling at new neighbours, getting to know the local streets, wandering for hours without any plan, going for a stroll along the beach and discovering yummy places to eat…

My travel bliss comes from the small and the everyday.

It doesn’t mean I’m not interested in visiting interesting places or taking part in new experiences or fascinating activities, but it does mean that I don’t want to spend all my time doing that and I generally choose to do a few things rather than lots.

For example, I could spend three months in a place and only do five of things Lonely Planet says are the star attractions. Some people do that in five days!

Also, I have a tendency to revisit places once I know I like them. I’ve been to back to Sri Lanka five times at the time of writing this post so I’m not exactly gallivanting all over the globe (update 2024 – 6 times!)

I guess it comes down to knowing my travel style, and by pushing myself to do things that I don’t want to do, just so that I can write about them seems pointless, boring and a waste of my time.

Myself in a subway, with an orange roof and brightly coloured mandalas - taken in Sri lanka — Sri Lanka – finding the bliss in the small and everyday

Travel blogging ruins my travel experience

When I visit somewhere new, I really love to fully soak it up – whether it’s a temple, a gallery, an ancient ruin or simply a restaurant. However, if I am approaching the experience, thinking that I must write a blog post on it, then it begins to taint experience.

I have found that when there is a motive behind an activity or sightseeing, it shapes what I am seeing and feeling and with that I lose out on the essence of it. Instead, it becomes influenced by looking for great camera shots and thinking about how I can present it differently to all the other travel bloggers that have already written about it. I would even say that a low-level anxiety creeps in as I ponder these things.

I believe that when I view or take part in an experience shaped by a lens, either physical or mental, I lose out on the richness of it. I much prefer to simply enjoy without the cacophonic need to mentally transcribe everything.

It reminds me of the countless times I’ve observed people visiting famous landmarks, perhaps places they have always dreamed of visiting and yet they spend the bulk of their time behind their mobile phone/camera. I often wonder if they’ll even remember how that place felt to visit or what it looked like without a selfie stick in front of it.

I wrote a blog post recently on mindfulness and solo travel, and this post was as much for my own reflection as it was for others. We spend so much of lives being busy, jumping from one thing to the next, with our minds in a constant flux and our breathing shallow with unease, it’s as though we have forgotten how to simply just be. We live in a world, that constantly pushes us to do more, learn more, earn more and to simply just enjoy with no ulterior motive can sometimes feel like a guilty pleasure.

Well for me the guilt is over. Life’s too short.

I’m all about feelings

When I write about something, I find it hard to leave my feelings out of it and to some extent, that’s why I struggle with writing a pure ‘travel blog’ style post because I want to tell you how I felt in that place, the things I learnt about myself and how I may have grown from the experience.

For me, writing comes from the heart and if it doesn’t then it gives me little pleasure. My one hope is that if you read something I’ve written you know that it’s written with absolute sincerity.

That’s all well and good, but from what I can gather when people read a travel blog, they’re not interested in my navel gazing, they want to know, for instance…. how to get the most out of a trip to Madrid or how to get from KL airport to Penang.

Travel blogging makes for boring writing (in my opinion)

I love writing, and when I’m on a roll I’m in my happy place.

But writing a blog post on the top must see place to visit in Bangkok or how to spend the perfect day in Florence – my eyes glaze over, I yawn a lot, I procrastinate like there’s no tomorrow and make excuses to go and get coffee!

Travel blogging is hard work

When I imagined the type of blog I would create, it was a fantastic wealth of information about different places with in-depth stories. I didn’t quite realise the work that would go into that and combined with the fact I’m a lazy traveller, the two are not a happy marriage!

There are a gazillion other travel blog posts on the same topic

If you’re somewhere way off the beaten path, then yep there might not be too many other blog posts on your chosen post title.

However, chances are if you’re somewhere which is remotely visited by people, other travel bloggers have got there before you.

I know what you’re thinking – but your voice is your own Jenny, you have something new and special to add. That’s true and if you google ‘is it worth starting a travel blog?’ lots of well-meaning bloggers (probably the ones who want to sell you a course on how to start a travel blog) will tell you just this.

And to some extent it’s true, but unless I’ve really got something super new to say on the marvels of Rome. I think I’ll leave it.

Plummeting back to Earth

I’m also struggling with the concept of being a travel blogger as I intuitively feel a pull away from advertising our world as a pretty playground for our every whim, when our Earth is crying out in pain.

It’s so easy to raise our hands in support of sustainable travel. We all know it’s for the best and yet how many of us hide under our own raised arms when wanting to plan an affordable holiday?

I’ve just spent several months in Malaysia and Thailand. In this time, I’ve experienced the choking effects of air pollution in Thailand where locals in major cities were advised to work from home due to unhealthy air quality, searing record breaking temperatures of 40+, reoccurring haze in Malaysia, plastics rolling in on the surf and the erosion of beaches.

I couldn’t wait to leave Bangkok. My clothes stunk, my lungs felt cloying and my eyes and nostrils burnt. It wasn’t much better further down the coast and the north suffered even worse, with Chiang Mai being reported as one of the most polluted cities in the world.

At the same time, as I scrolled Instagram, I was faced with pictures from people showing the magic of Bangkok and whilst I didn’t doubt that there was magic to be had, I struggled with the irony of my very polluted experience.

I could no longer ignore the deep nagging inside of me, asking me to question the purpose of travel blogging. What am I feeding? To what what end? And the answer that kept surfacing, was the perpetual consumption of our planet for our own pleasure (my own pleasure). I therefore realised it was time to take a step back and rethink how I blogged about places.

If you’re interested in learning how to approach travel in a sustainable way, I recommend Tilted Map, it provides lots of accessible practical tips.

I’m rubbish at social media and marketing

Before, I began my blog I didn’t have any social media (queue the tumbleweeds)…yes I actually managed to get to the age of 46 without Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in my life…and I was quite okay with that.

So, when I started my blog, I figured that I also had to dip into social media. I started cautiously on Instagram, with the help of my son, and despite my initial reluctance, I do now enjoy using it, primarily because I’ve made some lovely connections.

I then realised that I could link my Instagram to Facebook without too much effort, so I did that begrudgingly. However, I have to admit that on the whole I forget that Facebook exists. As for YouTube, TikTok…it’ll probably be a no from me.

I tend to have flurries with Instagram, sometimes I engage with it and sometimes I don’t. I feel we live in a world of so much mental noise; so many opinions, POVs and advice. And whilst I occasionally add my two-pennith into the mix, I tend to do it quite quietly.

And I know, I know – I’ve read countless times that I should be building up a story that people follow so they get to like me, so they pop over to my website. I also know I should be creating sales funnels for people to helter-skelter down – Charlie and Chocolate Factory stylie, landing in a delicious mound of gooey delight so they simply can’t wait to devour my offerings. And all manner of other things that I’m simply not doing.

So, I guess it would be fair to say that I do the ONE thing, you’re not supposed to do when you have a blog or indeed when you have published a book (which I have also done) – which is leave it to chance and hope people will find me in the vast sea of voices.

Bad right?

But you know what, people are finding my book, without me jumping up and down, and shouting about it. It sells, albeit slowly, and every time I get a royalty’s notification from Amazon, Barnes and Noble etc it makes my day…not because it’s making me rich (it isn’t) but because perhaps my little book (Solo Travel in a Relationship) may be helping a few women to set sail on their solo journeys.

And hey, my mum tells her friends I’m a bestselling international novelist – so that’s all that’s really important really.

Am I Going To Stop Blogging?

Nope! I don’t enjoy churning out fact filled travel blogs on places, not blogging per se.

When something takes my fancy, I’ll write about it, for example I was in Kandy, Sri Lanka and wanted to discover the decent coffee shops in Kandy so I thought it would be fun to put my detective hat on and set out like a reporter to find the best coffee shops and write a post on it.

It took me years to pluck up the courage to start Orchids to Olives and it feels like my baby, that grows and evolves with me. I love having a website, and there are many things I do love to write about. I also love the self-reflection and confidence I have gained from having my own website, and the connections I’ve made with others because of it.

Blogging now feels like a life project (and that’s a whole other blog post in the making).

Update October 2024: I have just revitalised and redesigned Orchids to Olives and I can truly say that this website has evolved with me into it’s current form. Due to various life events, I’ve unearthed a desire to research and write about places and spaces that nurture wellbeing, so expect a lot more along these lines!