Tag Archives | dream

Blogging Anniversary – Celebrating 5 years of rantings, screeds, wailings, gnashing of teeth, and unmitigated failures!

Written by on July 29, 2011
Filed Under Blogging

Exactly five years ago I started this blog.  Five years… my goodness has it been that long?

First it was a legal blog, but when that career path got derailed, then it became about… nothing.  Then it morphed into a series of online screeds about internet dating sites and how their creators needed to be exterminated from existence for unleashing such a vile plague onto the world.

But then I focused on… errr…. writing more rants on internet dating sites.

Yeah, it seemed like the well was pretty much dry.  I kept rehashing the same complaints over and over again, and just had nothing new to say anymore.  I thought many times about just deleting this blog altogether and moving on, because the hard truth was, my life, and thus my blog was going around in circles.

Pee Wee herman going around in circles

But then somewhere along the way, I decided to take a nice long trip to upstate New York after a very lengthy vacationing hiatus.  And eventually a seed was planted in my head:  why not blog about traveling?

Not too long after that trip, I eventually bought a GPS, discovered the joys (and horrors) of geocaching, and before I knew it, I had something new to write about again.

The more I focused on the traveling niche, the more I liked the idea of being a travel blogger.  Ever since I gave up on pursuing a legal career, my dream evolved into a desire to earn a living through the Internet, whether as a blogger or by some other means.  I wanted the freedom to move and live anywhere, the freedom of not having a boss or group of co-workers who dragged me down.  Being a travel blogger seemed like a good fit to achieving that dream.

But could I pull that off?  Eh.

I couldn’t shake off the feeling that I would be doomed to fail, just like I’ve failed at everything else in life.  Indeed, Mashable.com had just celebrated their own blogging anniversary a few days before me.  They only started their site a year earlier than I did, and they are now a multi-million dollar enterprise.   In my case, I grinded away on this blog for 5 years, trying to brainstorm ways to rake in traffic, develop an income and ultimately achieve my dream.  And after 5 years, I have nothing to show for my efforts.  At one point though I thought I was making progress, as my site was gaining almost $600 of revenue a month during its high point, money I was able to set aside to fund more traveling adventures.  But then Google inexplicably reduced my ranking and my traffic, effectively erasing 3 years of the progress I was making.  Now I only make $200 a month in revenue if I’m lucky.    Definitely can’t quit my deadend job now.

Do I give up?  I want to, but it would be stupid to abandon a blog that’s still making me money.  Plus a friend of mine is convinced I may be on the precipice of something huge, especially after the year I’ve had, and that I definitely should NOT give up now.

Indeed, I have traveled a lot for the past year, more than I’ve ever traveled in decades.  Before all this I hadn’t flown on a plane in literally 20 years, but in the past 10 months alone I’ve already flown 4 times, driven over 6,000 miles, and visited nearly half the states in the U.S.  It has been a banner year so far, and during that time I’ve attended conferences such as BlogWorld and SXSW, worked with several sponsors who provided me free products, paid me good money, even funded some of my trips, and am now taking a travel writing seminar to improve my skills even more.

I may also wind up being a featured columnist for a company blog this fall, which could open doors to even more opportunities.  As the summer winds down, I’m getting myself ready for that possibility too.  I’ve been busy behind the scenes just trying to prepare myself and practice for the potential life of becoming a freelance writer, including forcing myself to research the best notetaking tools, experimenting with and reviewing iPhone apps related to the travel niche, improving my photographic skills both on my camera and on the iPhone, and finally, developing a database of newsfeeds that can inform me with relevant news around the industry without overwhelming me with too much info.

It’s been a lot of work, but I hope, truly hope, that someday, it will all come to fruition.

And if not, well, I do have that trip to the Rocky Mountains to look forward to.  :-)

Walking on railroad

Where will my blogging journey ultimately take me?

Comments { 14 }

A Tale of Two Tracking Bugs

Written by on March 9, 2011
Filed Under Geocaching

In the world of geocaching, there’s a fun activity that involves the use of what’s called Travel Bugs. Basically, Travel Bugs are items of virtually any nature small enough to fit inside a geocache, with a unique tag attached to each one. These tags are shaped like dog tags, and have tracking numbers that can be used to log a retrieval or a drop-off of a Travel Bug, or just to prove you discovered one. Each bug has their own profile page where you can track their progress online and learn about what its mission/objective is. Some bugs have a goal of traveling to specific locations, while others have no specific objective in mind except to move from cache to cache.

To join in on the fun, I decided to release two Travel Bugs of my own last year. I went to a Walmart and found one of those split heart necklaces (those sappy necklaces where two lovers wear one half of a heart each,) then bought two tracking tags off Geocaching.com so I could release them separately into the wild. I released the first half of the necklaces in Boston near the sight of the famous Boston Tea Party, then the second half at a geocache in Central Park, Manhattan on Valentine’s Day. The goal I set was that these two necklaces (now Travel Bugs) would someday be brought together by a geocacher. Whoever accomplished the task could then keep both necklaces.

I know, silly right? I was feeling particularly sappy and stupid when I came up with this idea, but I figured why not. It’s been over a year now and both Travel Bugs have already traveled over 1,500 miles since their release.

Guess where they are now?

The first half is in AUSTIN, TEXAS, specifically in the hands of a pastor, who is planning to hand it off either to me or a nearby geocache once I arrive. The second half is in DALLAS, the very same city I’ll be visiting shortly after Austin.

What are the odds that the very same Travel Bugs would be in exactly the right cities, at exactly the right time when I’d visit, over a year and several thousand miles of journeying later?? It’s nearly unfathomable.

I used to daydream that I would someday go out and retrieve these bugs on my own, and in the course of doing so I would meet the girl of my dreams, who would also happen to be looking to unite the Travel Bugs as well. Two hearts, at long last united through geocaching, after a lifetime of looking. Sigh… if only.

It’s a silly and stupid dream, and I know it won’t come to pass. Sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence after all, although in my case, they’ve become more like instruments of torture. Just fate continually playing cruel jokes on me, to the point that I’ve lost all belief in the idea of there being soulmates, that the universe wasn’t random and senseless, and that there really WAS a purpose to all the events I’ve experienced in my lifetime. Nope. Life is random, cold, cruel, vacuous and utterly meaningless.

… Isn’t it?

Still, for them to be so close by, at just the right time in just the right places, it behooves me to resist going after these two hearts while I’m down there in in the Lone Star State. Maybe there’s a reason for it, and maybe not, but either way, I’ll have a story to tell.

Comments { 3 }

How Traveling Changed My Perspective

Written by on February 1, 2011
Filed Under Personal Reflections

Once upon a time when I was but a virginal traveling weenie, I would watch a movie, a TV show, or maybe a video on YouTube that often depicted a place in the world I’ve never been to, and I would wonder to myself what it would have been like to actually be there.

Nowadays though I would find myself watching a show on TV where the setting is say, Las Vegas, and I would nearly shout out to no one in particular: “I was there! I was there!!!”

I did the same thing when I saw a preview of Russell Crowe’s film, The Next Three Days, and immediately recognized the Duquesne Incline of Pittsburgh that I took a ride on last October.

“I was there! I was there!!!”

Suddenly, the world was no longer as alien to me as it used to be. Places once exotic are now familiar territory. A jaunt around Arkansas no longer required the need for a GPS like it used to. And yes, in fact, it is indeed possible for pubs in New Hampshire to make good pizza. :-D

Just the act of traveling changed me in a way. I no longer have to wonder about the world and the many wondrous places it offers. Instead I am finally experiencing it firsthand, and I know eventually that experience will expand beyond the country’s borders as well once I make my first international trip ever, either to Vancouver this June, or perhaps Germany this October.

If only I could do this for a living. Unfortunately though I can only stretch the umbilical cord that is my job so far before it ropes me in again with a vengeance. There must be a way, some way to achieve the life I’ve always dreamed of.

One that doesn’t involve winning the lottery of course.

Comments { 0 }

Celebrating Four Years! To Infinity and Beyond!

Written by on July 29, 2010
Filed Under Personal Reflections

Today my blog celebrates it’s fourth birthday!

 
Four years, and I’m in it for the long haul. It began with the intention of writing about my law school experience, and when that fell through the next blogging phase became a struggle with an identity crisis, as I struggled to decide what my blog should be about and how I could profit from all the work I had put into it, and from there it evolved into a treatise chronicling my abject failure on dating sites and with women in general. I cried, I wailed, I screamed, and I emoted, drowning my sorrows every night in hot cocoa and blueberry muffins.

And then one day, I made my very last payment on my college loan and was finally and completely out of debt. Shortly afterward, my blog had suddenly become a moneymaker. Not a “I can quit my job and live the rest of my days on a 50 acre ranch somewhere in the mountains of New Zealand” kind of moneymaker, but definitely an “I can buy lots of funsie toys and travel a whole HECK of a lot more often to anywhere I please” kind of moneymaker.

With that revelation in mind and the subsequent discovery of geocaching, the identity crisis I had long experienced with this blog finally came to an end. Why not make it about travel? Indeed, and not just travel, but a journey, a journey around the world that can now be experienced in reality rather than in my mind. A journey where I continually search for love. For truth. For justice. For geocaches. For… pizza. :-D

After 4 years, my blog, and even more importantly, my audience, has helped me fulfill one of my biggest dreams, and this may only be the beginning. Our fate is now tied together. I welcome you all to join me as I embark on a never-ending journey, where together we can discover a whole new world.

*Cue Star Trek Theme*

Original Star Trek Enterprise moving through space

Comments { 8 }

The Pursuit of Happiness

Written by on July 4, 2010
Filed Under Personal Reflections

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Last 4th of July I declared my financial independence by paying off the last of my debts. On this Independence Day I will begin to live it, laying down the groundwork that will allow me to live and move freely around this great country of ours, and perhaps the world itself. It is my hope that wherever I go, the blessings I enjoy will enable me to bless those around me as well. Despite all our country’s shortcomings, the successes I’ve found here could never have been achieved in any other country. May I never wake up from the American Dream.

Comments { 2 }
Older posts