Happy New Year: Reflections for 2017

Happy New Year, everyone!  I never realize how quickly the days and months go by until I've faced the end of yet another year.  Looking back, 2016 was an incredibly busy and eventful year for me.  I found myself traveling frequently for work, though always on a tight schedule, which unfortunately left little to no room for exploring the new cities in which I visited.  Fortunately, though, I was lucky enough to travel on my personal time in addition to my professional responsibilities.  I also reflected a bit on what I accomplished as a travel blogger and what it means to me to be a travel blogger in the foreseeable future.

ADVENTURES

My husband and I started off 2016 by booking our first trip to Charlottesville to explore some lovely Virginia wineries (Barboursville and Horton) and breweries (C’Ville-ian, Blue Mountain and South Street).  In March we took our annual family trip to Captiva, Florida, which is always a welcome retreat in the middle of winter.  Our next big event (in between several business trips!) was our wedding (such a perfect evening!) followed by our honeymoon to Northern California.  (I still have a lot of content to blog about for California, but you can read about the beginning of our trip here: 1, 2, 3.)  We ended our year with a bang and traveled to Australia and Asia with my husband’s family, which was the trip of a life time and involved many “firsts” for everyone.  Let me just say that the Palawan Islands in the Philippines look exactly like what you see in magazines—gorgeous!  As with California, I haven’t finished writing about this trip (actually, I haven’t even started!), but here’s an Instagram roundup of our vibrant excursion around the world.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

At the start of 2016 I wrote about my goals for Corking Around.  I met my goals to blog more frequently (at least for the first six months), blog about prior trips, and schedule tweets to network with more travel bloggers.  However, I did not succeed in participating in more travel blogger events or purchasing a domain name.  For the former, I felt rather limited as to where I could find travel blogger events.  I saw a couple of conferences that interested me, but unfortunately all of them fell on weeks during which I already had planned travel.  As for a domain name, I realized that I don’t feel as though I have the commitment (read below) to invest in purchasing one.

REALIZATIONS

Though I accomplished many of my travel blogger goals for 2016, I also realized how difficult it is to maintain a blog, especially after an incredibly busy past year both professionally and personally.  When I started this blog I admit that I thought it would be neat to gain some sort of miniscule notoriety in the travel blogosphere; so I tried to blog more often, schedule tweets, and engage in more travel chats to find others with similar travel interests.  However, I don’t care about that anymore.  I realized I’d rather not stress about writing about my adventures as soon as I get home.  I’d rather have a lazy or spontaneous weekend off of work or enjoy a weeknight watching Netflix with dinner than budgeting time to pump out post after post.  I am not retiring from travel blogging.  I am, however, taking a more casual approach to this hobby, which is why I decided not to purchase a domain name.  You probably won’t find me scheduling tweets all the time or updating my blog and Facebook page twice a week (not that I’ve kept up with it lately!), but I’ll definitely still be here.  Rather, I’ll blog when I want to, not because I feel like I have to.

RESOLUTION

In short, I will definitely still blog about my travel adventures, so please continue to check in on any of my social platforms.  However, I resolve to run this blog more as a casual hobby rather than a popularity contest.  After all, I’m only one small fish in a vast sea of travel bloggers.  If I can inspire just one person to venture out, then I’ll consider it a mission accomplished.