For someone who loves being a travel blogger, it’s surprising how much fun not travelling and not blogging can be.
It’s normally around this time that the year’s travel takes a hefty toll on my bank account and I slap a travel ban on myself. This year, this happened a bit earlier than usual and I have ‘officially’ not travelled anywhere since Russia in July.
(Unofficially, I’ve had two unscheduled trips back to the UK in July and August, travelled to Warnemünde on the German Baltic coast with 660 of my colleagues (gotta love trivago on tour) and spent a week working in Leipzig… but we don’t count those.)
What has made this ‘ban’ different from the others is that I stopped blogging.
Of course, I didn’t stop completely, but I found I was putting out one post a fortnight instead of writing one or two a week. In fact, from the beginning of July to the middle of August, I only posted twice.
In fairness, I have been fairly busy: I played in my first international sporting tournament in Belgium (ultimate Frisbee) and I have been training for a half-marathon (only two weeks to go!). In fact, I’m actually probably the fittest I’ve ever been in my life right now (which is fairly depressing).
My beloved hard-drive with over five years’ worth of photos also gave up a few weeks ago and I am still looking into options to have it resurrected. RIP.
But despite the other commitments, I have to say: I enjoyed not blogging.
I feel bad saying typing it, but it’s true. Maybe I just needed the break, but I felt like I had a lot more freedom. I stopped worrying about my stats or what the next story was going to be. I got into sport (for genuinely the first time ever) and had movie nights instead of blogging nights. It was fun.
So what’s changed? Well, I guess I must have missed blogging too because I feel really happy to have some time to write again. In truth, I feel a little bit refreshed and I’m keen to get my stats up again.
So while the travel ban is still officially firmly in place (unofficially I have two more trips back to the UK lined up for November), I am going to do my utmost to ease myself back into blogging after a fun summer away. J