How to pack lightly for a long trip

Pin for later! Once upon a time, Pinterest was beautiful. Like, “colour-coordinated candy buffets” and “photoshoot ideas for babies I don’t have” beautiful. Then, Pinterest for blogging came along, and we’ve been sad-drinking ever since. Somewhere along the way, some diabolical masterminds realized the potential of Pinterest to explooode traffic, and now it’s a platform none of us fully understand, but fling hours at anyway. And here’s a scary, ominous fact for you: the majority of bloggers are using Pinterest completely wrong. If you’re even mildly curious about whether or not you’re one of them – this post is for you. It’s the last week of #SlaySocial  my beautiful friends, and I’ve saved some dynamite info for last. Why? The past few weeks have largely been about strategy and reframing how we look at our favourite social media platforms. This week is no exception, except it is (I guarantee) the post t...

When I first started drafting this post, the original title was “Has Blogging Ruined Travel For Me?” I eventually decided against that, though, simply because it's misleading; it suggests that blogging about my travels has indeed diminished the experience for me in some way. Which isn't really true. Blogging has not “ruined” travel for me. But being a travel blogger HAS definitely changed the way in which I travel. On my very first “big” trip abroad (to New Zealand in 2005), I only had a vague concept of what blogging really was. (Come on, we all had a LiveJournal blog in high school, didn't we?) I had a bulky digital camera that ate through two dozen AA batteries in two weeks. And I wasn't even on Facebook yet. It was before the proliferation of smartphones and Instagram and readily-available wifi. Looking back, it was an entirely different world. In the intervening years, a lot has changed. Technology has evolved by leaps a...

Recently I've noticed more than a few travel bloggers becoming frustrated. Frustrated about being passed over for blogging opportunities. Frustrated at being left off lists of “top” travel bloggers. Frustrated over feeling left out of the clique of “cool” travel bloggers who seem to be so much more successful than everyone else. Someone said that travel blogging feels a lot like being back in high school. The kids who are deemed cool remain so, and it's difficult for any newcomers to reach that same level of coolness. I've felt frustrated, too. It's not easy to always feel left out, or feel like you're lagging behind with no chance of catching up. I think it's especially bad when I put a blog post out there that I'm really proud of, and then it flops. Some days, I wonder who I'm even blogging for; I wonder if anyone is even out there, paying attention. But I think this feeling of frustration is only natural. The “cool kids” of travel blogging st...