A personal view

I’ve been keeping a blog for a few years now. I began it because although I had been documenting our life and travels for a long time Stephen pointed out that the narrative was missing. When we travelled ‘around the world’ I kept a journal in pencil in a notebook, and that has been something I treasured, but seldom read after the first few years. Just recently, I wanted to check on a couple of trips we made this year and the ability to search for key words and places is quite wonderful.

It also highlights how much we forget, especially if doing a lot of trips during the year. Stephen remembers different places and events to me, and being able to refer back to the photos and narrative means that we have a chance to relive good experiences, whilst perhaps also remembering things that were difficult and challenging.

I back up all of our photos online using Flickr, as well as Apple Photos. Having the photos in order of date taken and easily searchable allows me to relive the experiences over and over again. But it is the blog which really provides a repository of memorable adventures.

I began a blog called ‘caravanning adventures’ in September, 2013. We took our small Starcraft caravan to the Eastern States in 2014 and we have a full blog of that trip. I finished that blog in March, 2016, switching to a more photography oriented blog ‘photographyperthwa.com’. I began that blog in December, 2013, documenting our home exchange trip to San Francisco. A new blog was needed because it wasn’t about caravanning.

Future writing plans

I plan to continue writing this blog, for the rest of my life if possible. I don’t always write about travel, sometimes it is all about significant events.

We also have a family Youtube channel. This is mostly for Matthew’s benefit as he really enjoys watching movies about us. I love capturing his happy moments as we do ordinary things together and joke around. I also enjoy capturing my husband on film, whether singing or enjoying activites such as looking for wildflowers. I work my way through video editing tutorials, but only when my simple knowledge of the progrom doesn’t allow me to solve a particular problem.

When we are travelling it is easiest to write a short blog entry with photos at the end of each day. It takes some discipline, and an internet connection, but I am always glad when I take the effort. The only time it was really difficult to do was when we were with a tour group in China. I made very few entries because we were so busy and finding time to myself was difficult. I was usually too tired by the end of the evening.

I don’t plan to ‘grow’ the blog or make money from it. If people want to read it, then I’m happy, but I don’t need more readers to motivate me to write. I have 58 ‘followers’, but not many actually read the blog. Checking my Statistics page on WordPress gives this information.

I don’t plan to turn it into a book. It would take a lot of work to make the stories interesting to other people. It is enough to have a reason to blog – to help preserve memories of our life and travells.