You may have noticed I’ve been extremely quiet on the blogging front this last year. Don’t get me wrong, I thought about the blog a lot last year. For some reason it was just not a priority. The stress of knowing I should do something was taking the joy away from it all, which in turn caused me to blog even less.
I knew the blog needed a ‘come back’ but since I had been out of the rhythm of it for so long, I wanted to make sure I was ready to come back. Rather than just post something as soon as it was ready, I wanted a queue of blog posts ready to go. That way even if I had a busy (or lazy) period there would still be content to publish.
While I did get a few things done throughout the year, they were few and far between. Maybe I wasn’t going to be able to set up this queue of blog posts like I had imagined. Maybe I just needed to start posting again and get my blogging mojo back. But it wasn’t until December that I finally released a brand new post. And that’s when I realised it. My last post before that was my Books Read in 2023 post. The only things I had actually published that year were the 2 posts I wrote to recap the year previous. That was it. All year long. Between mid January and early December there were no new posts on Curious Claire.
After that realisation I started questioning it all. What was I doing? Was the blog important to me or had it become a habit? An annoying thing I felt pressure to do. Maintaining a blog is hard work so if it’s not bringing you joy, should you even be doing it?
Was It Just The Blog I Was Failing At?
Yes, my blog wasn’t doing much but there’s more to blogging than just blogging. There’s a whole world of social media that comes along with it. Maybe I could make myself feel better by showing I was still being a good blogger elsewhere.
I’ve had a love / hate relationship with Instagram for a while now. Pretty much since they were bought and changed owners so it’s always the platform I’m happy to ‘forget’ about. That being said I remember this time last year telling myself I would start posting more.
Did I manage it? No. Not even close. It might have been my least performing year on Instagram ever. I posted twice in January when I was keen to post regularly. Then nothing until July and that was just 1 post. Then nothing again until September. Just 1 post again. And that was it. For the whole year.
Ok so I didn’t post on the grid. It’s not something I do often but I’m usually quite regular on my stories. Well just like everything else in 2024, my stories were not done with the same enthusiasm. I kept neglecting to upload stories about my work trips and I had every intention of doing them at a later date. I even started a couple of times, but I didn’t get very far.
I’ve never enjoyed posting on my Facebook page. Linking it to Instagram made it easier as I could post without actually posting. But without posting on Instagram, my Facebook page wasn’t very active. Thankfully, December makes it look active as I post pictures of my beer advent calendar. But overall, there wasn’t much happening throughout the year on that platform either.
I am one of the many people who stopped using this platform when it became X. I don’t even consider X as a thing. I still refer to it as Twitter! But I’ve been trying out the other Twitter type platforms and Threads is the most popular one. However, I looked and I only posted 38 times.
Clearly I was failing at all the social media platforms as well as the blog.
Why Have I Stopped Blogging?
Well technically I didn’t stop. I just went at a speed so slow it looked like I wasn’t moving forward. But there are 2 main reasons why things started slowing down.
The first reason that things started to change was something big changed in my life. I met Boyfriend. Well more importantly, I moved in with him. I went from being single and spending most of my free time on my laptop, to having someone in my life I wanted to spend all my time with. I stopped blogging in the evenings because I wanted to enjoy time with the man I only get to see in the evenings.
I’ve been a shift worker my whole career. I work early mornings, late evenings and even overnight. I spend a lot of the usual social hours at work. So whenever I was home, I wanted to be enjoying his company. And as I’m not a morning person, the majority of my blog work hours had suddenly disappeared.
I should probably point out here that this was completely my own choice. If I had told him I wanted to spend some extra time working on my blog, he would have been happy for me to do so. I just didn’t want to give up the already limited evenings I had with him. He doesn’t even realise my evenings used to be important blogging hours. I should probably warn him about this before I actually publish this post!
But we’ve now been living together for 4 years and my blogging didn’t dramatically slow down until last year. So what changed?
My work changed. I didn’t swap careers but I changed the type of work I did. Before I was doing cover shifts for big companies who had a freelancer pool or small jobs I shared with several other freelancers. It meant most of my work was short term. The type of work where you typically wait around in case something goes wrong. Which means you have a lot of free time to get your own tasks done. Don’t get me wrong, not every job was like this so it’s not like I was on my laptop working all the time. But it was enough to get a good chunk done.
However, last year I started doing more location jobs. In these jobs they take a team to film a show or part of a show away from London, usually outside of the UK. And because each person they take needs a flight and hotel paid for, they usually take less people which means working more days. Typically on these jobs you’d work 6 or even 7 days a week and it’s completely normal.
These jobs vary in duration but will be around 1 week to 6 weeks long. So that means I’ll be away from home working most of the week for several weeks at a time. Oh and 90% of these jobs will be either 10 or 12 hours long. As I’m sure you can imagine, they are busy and exhausting. On the job I tend to be too tired to want to work on my blog in my downtime and when I get home I need a few days to recover by doing absolutely nothing.
When 2024 started I wasn’t sure how many of these location jobs I would get asked to do. I ended up doing quite a few so during the months of May to November I wasn’t doing much on the blog. Now maybe you can understand why I only posted new blogs in January and December in 2024!
So Is This The End?
I’ve thought really hard about this decision. It wasn’t one I wanted to make lightly. Curious Claire has been a big part of my life for a long time. I’ve always called this blog my baby. People don’t get rid of their babies, right? Well I guess they do and especially when it’s a ‘project baby’. I know a lot of bloggers recently who have shut down or sold their blogs.
It would be easy to walk away and there’s no shame to it. Some things just aren’t meant to last forever. There would be no more pressure to be on my website writing all the time. No more pressure to be posting regularly. No more pressure to be on my phone my whole trip. No more pressure to record every place I visit. No more pressure to visit as much as possible so I can say I did. Honestly, can you see why giving up the blog is so tempting?
But I can’t do it. I’ve had so little time to blog this last year but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to give it up. I love it. I love sharing stories. I love my travel blogging community. I love interacting with people who follow along with my adventures.
What’s The Next Step?
Honestly I’m not completely sure! But I want to give the blog one last chance. I’m not entirely sure why but I’m not ready to give it up. Because of that I think I owe the blog one last chance. She deserves a chance to be who she was meant to be right? If I find myself in the same situation next year then it might be time to pull the plug. But until then, let’s see what happens in 2025.
So What’s The Plan For 2025?
Well as you might be able to tell by the lack of posting, my plan to be more productive on the blog isn’t off to the greatest start. This was originally supposed to be a January or February post, but as you can see, it’s become a March post. Not the end of the world but shows I’ve really lost my old blogging habits. And that’s definitely something I need to work on.
The first plan of action is to make sure I sit down with my laptop and actually do the writing required to publish blog posts. I have so many things I can write about, I just need to pick the ones I feel most passionate to write about to get my mojo back.
The big adjustment will be keeping up with the blog while on those location jobs I mentioned earlier. Now, there is a chance that I won’t get offered any of these jobs this year. It’s not one of those things that’s guaranteed. Although, to get none would mean that I’ve managed to alienate myself from multiple companies which means I have bigger problems! What could happen is I get offered less location work than last year. That would make blogging easier but would be a shame as I do like the location gigs.
If I only get a few this year it will be easy to manage both. But I think my main problem is the blog stuff has become a chore and I need it to be fun again.
How Do I Make It Fun Again?
This part I actually found easier than I expected. For now I’m just focusing on making the social media side fun again. It started with BlueSky. I had actually joined a couple of years ago but the app was pretty quiet back then. But then I found out some other travel bloggers had joined, so in December I went back and the app was now buzzing with activity.
I quickly came to focus on BlueSky because I was enjoying it the most. I found myself part of a beer tribe and it was fun to talk beers with fellow beer lovers. Technically as a travel blogger I should focus more on the travel side of my life but since November I haven’t travelled so beer became the focus of my posts. And no-one is asking a blogger for their BlueSky stats as it’s still new so I was free to use it however I wanted. And the truth was, the beer side was making me happy.
That’s when it really hit me. I’m obsessed with beer. I have a passion for craft beer. And being a travel enthusiasts, I love finding new beers and breweries on my trips. I am a beer traveller.
Beers and Boarding Passes
My enjoyment of BlueSky and talking about beers had me wanting more of it. I thought about it and I wanted a place where I could talk travel and beer. Before I knew it I was coming up with possible names and checking if they existed. Suddenly Beers and Boarding Passes was born.
Is this a replacement for Curious Claire? No. I love my travel side of things. I just wanted somewhere I could talk beers with people who also love travelling for beers. I made a little Facebook group for just that and was surprised that in 1 week it jumped to having 200 members and is continually growing. I had found a tribe of travel lovers who enjoy beer and I was so happy.
I ended up making a Beers and Boarding Passes Instagram too and for the first time in forever, I was enjoying Instagram. It was fun finding new beer people to connect with. To see how they were posting beer pictures. I didn’t expect it, but Beers and Boarding Passes made me enjoy an app I was ready to give up on, so much so that I have actually been enjoying my Curious Claire Instagram too.
What Can I Do For You?
Without sounding too cheesy like a politician who doesn’t actually mean it, let me ask you guys what you want from Curious Claire? Do you want more posts about certain locations? Or certain topics? Do you want more Instagram posts or stories? Do you want more videos?
Unlike the politicians, I do genuinely mean it when I ask what you want more of. This blog would be nothing without you guys and I want to give you more of what you want. So let me know!
I have no idea how this year is going to turn out but I’m excited to see what happens. For the first time in a long time I’m remembering why I love blogging and why I started.
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