I’ve noticed a trend lately within the travel blogger/lifestyle blogger arena: everyone seems to be heading towards an increasingly single vision.
It seems that just about every travel blogger and lifestyle blogger out there started out in the corporate world and then “came to their senses” and shifted over to their current, non-traditional lifestyle. They use the money they had from their previous job, plus money they make selling the stuff they have, in order to fund the beginning of their new life.
That’s all well and good, and very admirable, but what about those of us who saw through the corporate charade from the beginning and never joined corporate America or the Cult of Stuff in the first place? I honestly find very, very little advice out there for those of us who chose not to have a desk job, who chose not to acquire stuff, who chose to follow their dreams from the very beginning.
I was raised by two artists. Both of my parents have never had a desk job, and have always been the type to value experiences over “stuff”. These values were passed down to me from day one, and it has been great. I’ve never had trouble with choosing my own happiness over what the rest of the world seems to think I should be choosing. I spent a year living on the road, and a year living abroad. Sounds great, right? It is, but…
…nobody I talk to seems to be able to give me advice on how to start traveling again. Everybody’s immediate advice on blogs is the same old “quit your corporate job, use the money you saved through it, sell all the crap you acquired, and go!” adage that is becoming an increasingly single-path message on travel blogs. There’s a problem with applying this advice to me.
For starters, I don’t have a corporate job. I value my time over money (as most lifestyle designers do), and thus I work part time as a dog walker and I do writing, web design, photography, and other odd digital jobs on a freelance basis. I make about $1000 a month, which is pretty much just enough to pay for my part of our bills, and for me to pay my own bills. Sure, I could be earning more if I took a second job, or worked in an office environment, but…it seems silly to me to take on a job I would hate just so that I can “escape” it again a few months later.
As for the “stuff” part of the equation…I don’t have it. I donated about 70% of my belongings before I left for Korea, and I haven’t really acquired much since then. All of the belongings I have with me (meaning everything but the stuff from my childhood that is at my parents’ house) can fit into approximately 5 large plastic bins. Most of that is reenacting clothes (which I won’t ever get rid of, as it’s my main hobby), and the rest is a small closet’s worth of clothes, some books, a few toiletries, my digital supplies, and a few knickknacks. I don’t really buy much of anything these days unless it has a long-term use. All of our furniture is my boyfriend’s, since he is the one who prefers to have a home base. Most of what I own these days is not anything I really care to part with in a long term sense. So, the whole “raise money by selling stuff” advice doesn’t work for me because frankly, I have nothing to sell.
I’ll be honest: I sometimes almost feel like I have been punished for following my dreams from day one, rather than having an epiphany further down the road. When I talk to other travel/lifestyle bloggers about my life, I first get praise for my “understanding of the world”, but then I often get a confused or blank look when I ask them what I could be doing to further improve.
You can’t really expect people to provide advice on areas they have no experience with, but I feel that it’s a major failing of the travel blogging world that all the advice seems to be geared toward folks in a certain life situation, without providing much, if any, help for a wider range of potential travelers. This isn’t meant to be a “wah wah nobody helps me” post, it’s meant to be, hopefully, a wake-up call for those folks who are all writing the same material, and who don’t really have much to say to the world other than “do what I did”.
If you’re a travel blogger or lifestyle blogger, take a good, long look at your blog, and think critically about how wide of an audience your advice can actually help. How is your story different from the hundreds of other travel bloggers out there in the world, and how can those differences help a different niche of people? What are the limitations or strengths of your advice? Think about your message and how many people it can actually apply to. If your message is simply “do what I did”, then you might want to think about challenging yourself a bit as a blogger by thinking outside your own nomad box and writing about folks who may be in a different situation than you were once in.
Just some thoughts. Let me know how you feel about them.
This blog post is a response to comments on both my post "My Beef with Travel Bloggers" and Nomadic Read More
Well, today is the fourth day of the federal government being closed due to Wintergeddon '10. We've now gotten 58" Read More
After a few months in Korea, I decided to start a travel blog about my experiences there. Initially it was Read More
If you've been keeping up with this blog for awhile, you are probably aware that both my parents are in Read More
Always love hearing your thoughts! I’m more of an expat, less a traveler, but I’ve sort of been lumped in. So I don’t always “fit in” either! Mostly when everyone is counting down the days to their big RTW trip… I was a struggling writer the year before I “left,” totally squished by the economy. The responsibility of saving for a trip should be commended, as should my own story of crawling out of debt by moving to a cheaper place abroad. Hopefully with more encouragement like yours, we’ll all get our unique stories and lessons out there!
@Abby: I find that I’m somewhere between an expat and a traveler. I prefer to spend long periods of time where I travel – at least 2-3 weeks in each location (I spent four weeks living in a village in Switzerland with less than 100 people in it, so that I could get to know the place). Most of the travel crowd seems to be geared toward either backpacking from place to place, constantly on the move, or toward those who want to become full-time expats, living semi-permanently in a foreign country, like I did while I was teaching in Korea for a year. There doesn’t seem to be much in between.
Well said and very true. Excellent post.
Hey Kelsey,
Interesting article. There are a lot of career-breaker blogs out there. I have never really though I fit that mold myself. I’ve known, pretty much since I graduated college that I wanted to make travel a major focus of my life and I’ve been experimenting with various ways to do that for the last three years. I AM working a 9-5 now, but it was always the plan to use the job to earn the money to do something else- never about pursuing an office career.
One of my major goals for my blog is to encourage other young people to start making travel a part of their lives from an early age and NOT wait until they are burned out from a career. I do talk about myself a lot and my experiences and plans, but I also try to include a lot of broader articles as well.
The good news is that the blogosphere has you! You’ve identified an untapped niche, one that you are clearly an expert on. While that doesn’t help you too much with finding advice, it’s great that you are out there to give advice to people of a similar background.
Interesting post, and one I can relate to more now that it has been over 2 years since I left my corporate job and took my big trip, which ended with a taste of that sweet expat lifestyle abroad.
Sometimes I have “wtf am I doing” moments now that I realize going back to the office (only to quit again to travel) is not for me. I know it’s a popular route for the younger crowd, but I’m trying to stake my claim to a new way of life now.
And actually, the longer I’m back in the US, the more content I am with the amount of traveling I’ve done. What I want more than to travel, is to have the option and freedom to travel when I want. So to do that, I aim to continue building the Go Backpacking site and brand, while helping others to build up their sites.
I briefly replied on twitter, but thought I’d go further in a comment.
You’ve pretty much hit on the head the problem I’ve been having. I’m still in college, and changed schools & moved back home to have the time and money to start establishing the base for a business that I can transition into full-time when I graduate with my BA. Since I’m going to be self-employed, at least for the bulk of my income, I stopped worrying about getting an impressive BA for grad school/employment, and decided to get one I found interesting and potentially useful.
But in terms of finding other bloggers who have advice for me, specifically, I’ve sort of hit a wall. A thousand choruses of “don’t quit your dayjob when you start out freelancing/blogging/making a business” aren’t much good when you don’t have a job to begin with. Not much content on the internet is focused on making the most of non-traditional or distance education students beyond very basic information.
When I made the decision to cut loose from the career path I found I didn’t like so well, and follow my passions, I had expected it to be a bit less lonely. I know deciding to become a writer with an emphasis on history & education from a non-academia perspective is already a niche, but I would have thought more non-traditional students were running successful start-ups and talking about the challenges of balancing and the advantages/disadvantages of non-traditional education & living outside the box.
I’m envious of your upbringing and how you saw the world at such an early age. Those of us who weren’t raised by such enlightened parents but managed to escape from the chains of materialism and corporate life are lucky that we at least got a clue before it was too late. But you’re so right, many of us don’t know what it’s like to start traveling from nothing. That’s where you have such an advantage over the majority of travelers, and it’s we who have lots to learn from you!
Thanks for commenting on our RV travel blog. Count me in as a subscriber of yours, I like what you have to say.
Funny, I never actually thought about this. My biggest beef with the travel world is a lot of people assume you can just work to save up money, pack and leave. I’d love to learn how to travel while managing an overwhelming amount of debt on the road, and I kinda feel like I’m the only one…?!
Anyway. Perhaps you should be the one to crack the code?
Some excellent observations here, and some I resonate with as well. I’ve been self employed and location independent in my job since I was 20 (16 years now). I’ve been living outside of society’s boxes for so long, that I find I’m a bit on the opposite side of the spectrum with it comes to advising folks who feel stuck in corporate America. It’s just not a path I have any experience with on sharing my opinions on. I consciously constructed a lifestyle for myself (long before ‘lifestyle design’ was a buzz word) and my taking my existing life on the road (still working doing the same ‘job’ I love, as well as being agile in taking up opportunities as they come along) is just a natural evolution of the life I set out to make for myself.
So yeah.. I too find very little advice on the subject. But the fact of the matter is.. those of us already living outside of cubicles are more in the role of being beacons, not of needing guidance ourselves. We are living the dreams that so many aspire to.
Those of us living these lives from the onset already have the tools, personality and ambition to create our lives.. and we do so in such unique and uncharted fashions – that really, there’s no advice that would really be all that valuable to be given. We’re natural born lifestyle creators.
I find so much more strength in seeking each other out and being co-community members who help inspire and be inspired by each other to live our own individual paths.
Awesome to meet you virtually, by the way. Looking forward to co-inspiring with you
– Cherie
I think the non-corporate option has to be teaching, as you did in Korea. It’s not the same as a year RTW trip to be sure, but it is a paid year abroad, and I think if you really made an effort you could save upwards of 15,000 dollars by the end of the year. This would help alleviate debt issues as well. If a year is too long, I think Taiwan (amongst other places) has more flexible contracts.
@Ahimsa: I agree that teaching is a good option, but I think you misunderstood my post. I was not asking for help in trying to find a job option, I was trying to get travel bloggers to realize that some people start off at the travel stage, they don’t arrive at it later, in an epiphany, as most travel bloggers seem to. I’m well aware of the teaching options abroad, as I act as somewhat of an advisor on the subject for students from my alma mater wanting to pursue that path. I know about teaching in Korea, Japan, Russia, Dubai, Argentina, Croatia…pretty much anywhere you can think of. I also work as sort of a “spotter” for two recruiters in Korea, sending folks their way.
On a personal note: I will not teach ESL again, unless it’s on a volunteer basis in a country I enjoy. I really, honestly can’t stand kids. Teaching, for me, was only slightly less soul-crushing than a desk job, and it’s why I am not pursuing substitute teaching here in the US.
Ah, I see what you mean. Like you, I never had the corporate savings or anything valuable to sell off, so my travels have been sporadic and I fully understand. But I guess I haven’t encountered the corporate angle quite as much. (Maybe I just haven’t read enough blogs.)
By the way, what about ESL teaching to adults? It can still be soul-crushing, but at least you avoid those rascally children!
1. As you said, it’s till soul-crushing, and I refuse to work jobs I don’t enjoy.
2. It doesn’t pay enough. The adult ESL jobs I have found in this area can’t offer me more than about 18 hours a week at $15/hr. I make more than that walking dogs, and I work fewer hours.
There are a lot of people who realize very early on that “soul-crushing corporate jobs” were not from them. They don’t, however, fancy themselves “lifestyle designers,” probably because that sounds like a newfangled yuppie word.
If you started poking around the broader world of simple living and debt-free living, you might find things more useful to your needs.
However, I’m not sure any of them could tell you how to travel with no savings other than to do work-travel. I mean…traveling, even traveling on the cheap, takes money. I understand that you don’t want to take on even another part-time job to travel, but if the option to sit around and THINK about traveling rather than ACTUALLY traveling…? You could get paid to travel, but you’d still be work-traveling.
@Amanda: Oh, don’t worry, I have my own plans. I have a huge project that will be launched sometime later this month, which involves international travel.
Also – it’s not really a matter of taking on another part time job – I don’t have time for one. Last week I kept track of the number of hours I worked, and the average was around 16.
I think a lot of people misunderstood this post. As I said, this post was not a call to have folks help me. I already have my own plans, that I have come up with on my own. The purpose of this entry was to call attention to the common travel blogger habit of not really looking all that far beyond their own experiences.
@Stephanie I think what you’re doing is great, and you’re not really one of the folks I was pointing a finger at with this post. You’re well aware that your job is a means to an end, and you have plans that you are already putting into place. It seems to me that a lot of bloggers, especially in the “lifestyle design” category had something of an epiphany when they made their change, and they don’t realize that the job that they considered a ball and chain was actually also a privilege.
I was raised a military brat. I came by the sandy shoe syndrome honestly.
I left home as a teenager, and continued to travel…by my wits. Money wasn’t something I thought about much back then.
I’ve had a motorcycle since 1971, and my mantra for most of the intervening years has been: “If it don’t fit on a motorcycle, ya don’t need it.”
Like you, most of what I’ve acquired through the years, if worth keeping is stored at my folks house.
The furniture is rented. My boyfriend owns some stuff…he don’t like to travel…
I travel by getting corp. to pay for it. I offer to test this motorcycle or that and write reviews. I also write stuff of my rides, sell photos…and I will hire out to “daily work, daily pay” when my funds run really low.
I camp for free using state or Fed. lands… I eat from roadside markets…much cheaper than restaurants…I cook at my campsite…and I will stay at the homes of people I meet through my blogs and my writings.
I see much of America in ways that I feel give me more freedom than the guys who have only the limited freedom of a bank account.
I like my life, I’m no beggar…I work for my way about the country, (I even worked in Honduras when I decided to stay for a while). It’s a good life…I love it, and I’m lucky to have a partner at “home” who don’t mind when I take off for a bit.
This is a really moving post, Kelsey. I don’t think you should ever feel punished for never having been part of corporate America. That’s a truly unique gift – just have sympathy for all those poor working stiffs who would love to have the freedom that you (and heck, me, too, for that matter) have been blessed with. We’re lucky gals.
P.S. – Not all corporate America is bad – I promise. My hubby’s co-workers are great, they genuinely try and create a positive and happy work environment, and they’re trying to make the world a better place.
Hmmmm – this certainly evoked a response from me internally; thanks for being honest. So I will do the same. I am one of those bloggers that write about leaving corporate…give up posessions…travel…epiphany…etc – but I write about that because that’s what I know. My blog is personal, and I write about what I know. Funny thing is that when I started this abt. 4 yrs ago there wasn’t anyone writing about career breaks; in fact the only stuff out there was for gap year, young backpackers! Maybe people saw a need and filled it? Maybe that’s what someone needs to do with your idea!
There are all kinds of travelers out there and all kinds of stories – I think you bring up a good niche that probably isn’t being represented. There are plenty of sites for gap year breaks for younger travelers – but they assume you then come and get a ‘good job’ after you are done having fun. I like your idea – but I’m not the person to represent it as a single blogger that doesn’t do guest posts! However as I get used to this new lifestyle that I’ve chosen (which is a bit closer to yours – but still quite a gap I suppose), I do try to write more about it as now it’s become my life.
I learned a while ago that I cant worry about what others are doing or not doing…if you see something under-served – then serve it up!
I”m really excited for your upcoming project – yet still dying to know what it is about! Best of luck!
I get your point but people should blog about what they know and what they know happens to be their experience. I’ve never had a corporate job or an interest in the corporate world for that matter, but I think that I’ll find my answers in The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated. I’ve only just cracked it open, but I’ve heard that it has quite a few new case studies from people of all walks of life.
@Liz: I agree with you, but many of the travel/lifestyle design bloggers end up being one big repeating machine, and they often write as if their advice will work for everyone. The purpose of this post was to make bloggers think critically about how broad or how narrow their advice is when it comes to the audience that they are able to help.
I’m not much of a fan of the 4-Hour Workweek, honestly. It too has something of a single vision, and the first half of the book is mostly the guy talking about how awesome he is, while the second part talks about how to sell useless stuff online. I found it rather off-putting.
If that’s the typical travel blogger mould, I don’t fit it either… though in a different way. I make short trips here and there, as often as I can, but I have no wish to do a lengthy RTW or live abroad, I love my home too much.
In your situation? I’d consider starting a slow trip, walking or cycling – though, depending on where you live, you might want to fly somewhere else for it. Or find something unusual enough to attract a large online following and consequent sponsorship
@Rachel: As I’ve said in replies to a couple people – I’m not looking for help. I already have experience traveling, and I have plans for a large journalism project that will be taking me to Mongolia and Central Asia. I haven’t written about it because I’m keeping it super secret until it launches to prevent copy-catting.
@Rachel: Sorry if that came off as aggressive – it wasn’t meant to, I just have said the same thing to several people already – you know how it goes.
I’m like you to a certain extent in that I prefer to have a home base and travel intermittantly. But, I also enjoy living abroad and traveling for extended periods of time. I am, as you called it, generally a “slow” traveler. I prefer sticking to one or two places when I travel, in an effort to get to know the area better, to immerse myself more fully in the experience. I actually have a post coming about that soon.
@Sherry Ott: I definitely agree that this is very new. That’s part of why I said that this seems to be a new trend. The new crop of travel bloggers seems to largely fall into the pattern I referenced, just as the previous crop of travel bloggers all fell into the pattern of gap-year kids. I guess what I would like to see is for someone to make a travel/lifestyle blog that is about building a life that you want, no matter what that life is. Maybe I’m the one to do that, I’m not sure. I often feel unqualified because from an outside perspective I am not “successful” in a traditional sense, but I constantly have friends coming to me for life advice, so…I dunno.
This is part of why I am considering starting up a secondary blog, so that I can keep this one as something more personal, while making the other one more focused and potentially bringing in a lot of guest-posters, etc. But, as someone noted in the comments, it might be difficult because so much of the way I do things has to do with who I am, and without that personal content, I’m not sure how successful it would be. I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on that: http://www.driftingfocus.com/blogs/
Just wanted to respond to you comment about not feeling qualified…
You said you aren’t successful in the traditional sense and that makes you feel unsure about starting up in the niche that is missing.
Who really gets to define ‘successful’? YOU
We all know success is different for everyone.
Isn’t be non-traditional exactly what you were talking about that was missing in travel blogging/lifestyle design? I think someone like yourself if the right person to deliver it!
As for you other question of 2 blogs vs. 1 – I’ll leave my comments on that post.
I met this couple on a recent trip to Taiwan that had given up corporate to travel the world. I was interested in hearing of the places they’d been to and how they were traveling so I asked a lot of questions. Just basic curiousity. When I mentioned that I was working in Korea and some of my upcoming travel plans, they got this pity look and said, “If you really want to travel, you need to be willing to save a lot of money and give up your desk job.”
Huh? The conversation continued with them trying to convince me that the only way to travel was to save a ton of money and depart from the average type of work. It was as though the only way to be a ‘successful’ traveler was to do it the exact way that they have done it. I became as annoyed with the conversation as I do with most of the travel lifestyle bloggers out there.
There is one travel lifestyle blogger out there that I like. nerdynomad.com. A lot of her blog is about how she has been able to earn money with online content but I like it mostly because she also skipped out on the corporate thing and she’s absolutely honest in her reviews on information put out there by other bloggers.
Nice post, but its not good to have too much free time. Again if you have traveled around Western Europe, you know why.
@MountainCat What does free time have to do with this post? I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.
GREAT article!
i find it kind of annoying/obnoxious that most travel blogs are this way actually. but now i find myself wondering whether my blog is much different. i got fired from a corporate job. i never liked working for the man. sometimes you have to take jobs you hate to pay the bills and this was definitely one of them. i was glad to be fired. i’m actually torn between my direction for my blog.. i’m not sure if i want to associate myself w/ “lifestyle design” scene even though i’m basically a proponent of it.. because, again, i find these blogs obnoxious. but maybe that means i should be a part of changing it… instead of running away.
This article is so true! As a young person with a background much like yourself, it’s frustrating to read articles whose messages are “Scale back: buy a used car instead of getting it new!” and “Get rid of all your extravagances! Budget more by not going out to eat all the time” when I’m on a totally different level and wavelength.
@Kristen: I love NerdyNomad too! I really need to re-do my blogroll, because I have a bunch of travel folks I need to add links to.
And yeah, I often feel the way you did about the folks you met when it comes to travel/lifestyle bloggers. It seems like most folks start of thinking outside the box, but then they end up forming their own, new, box. Sure, it’s different than the box everyone else is usually in, but it’s still a box. Am I making sense?
@Ari: I agree. Advice like “buy things used! sell your stuff! don’t go out to eat! don’t go on packaged travel!” isn’t terribly useful for those of us who already do those things. Sure, they’re great advice for someone who has no clue where to begin, but honestly I think that those folks are *not* the types who actually read travel blogs. All of the advice seems to be aimed at a very basic level, with not much out there for the more advanced folks.
Hey there,
I just discovered your blog and like what I’m reading!
I wonder about all of these lifestyle designer blogs popping up. Sure, you can save money, quit your job and sell your stuff but that in and of itself doesn’t mean you’ve created a new life for yourself… it means you’ve decided to move abroad or go travelling like loads of other people out there. Many of the lifestyle design types admit that they’re actually struggling to make a consistent income and unless they can manage this then their new found life will come to an end when the money runs out.
If you’ve been doing it from the start then you’ve got that part down, I guess you just need to figure out how to make an income to support whatever plans you have in mind. I only make about $1500 a month with my internet stuff but I live cheaply (except for plane tickets I decide to buy for ridiculous routes around the world) and don’t have any bills or debt.
I never bought into the corporate world and while other uni grads were going to job fairs, I hopped on a plane to Australia and eventually found myself picking fruit to pay my way. Then I was a travel agent and office monkey in London and returned to my fruit picking career in New Zealand. Working, even in an office, is a lot more bearable when it’s in another country and working holidays were key to my early days of travel while I built up my net earnings.
I like what you said about ‘building a life that you want, no matter what that life is’ and think that a lot of the bloggers on the go right now look down on people in the corporate world as mugs. The corporate world isn’t for me, but some people dig it. I don’t like the ‘I know better’ attitude that’s floating around out there at the moment.
Glad you like my blog and I will be hanging around yours for sure… although my computer died today so it might be awhile!
Take care,
Kirsty
@Kirsty: “Many of the lifestyle design types admit that they’re actually struggling to make a consistent income and unless they can manage this then their new found life will come to an end when the money runs out.”
I agree. Many folks grow their traffic and following by making it look like they barely work at all and are rolling in dough, when in reality they work 12hr days to make it all work and in the end don’t make a lot of money – just enough to survive overseas. That is actually another of my issues with the LD crowd – they all talk about living a good life while not working very much, when in reality, the only way to live a good life based on the small income they’re able to gain is to live overseas. It’s great if you want to live overseas, but it leaves in the dark all those folks who want to work less and spend more time with their families but don’t want to leave the country.
“I don’t like the ‘I know better’ attitude that’s floating around out there at the moment.”
I agree. That’s why I mentioned the attitude of “do it my way” that seems very pervasive on the web. There’s a difference between educating people about what you have done and telling people it’s the only/best way.
I’m glad to have you among my readers and look forward to your future comments!
@Sherry Ott: “You said you aren’t successful in the traditional sense and that makes you feel unsure about starting up in the niche that is missing.
Who really gets to define ’successful’? YOU
We all know success is different for everyone.”
Oh, I know, and I consider myself successful in my own right. However, my own self-confidence is not enough to draw readers. It’s hard to get people’s attention unless you show them that you have what they want. Right now I have what I want, but not what most folks are looking for, so it’s hard to convince folks to listen to me. Does that make sense?
@Candice: I’m slowly becoming convinced that the majority of travel/lifestyle bloggers are single folks who have business or technology degrees and used to work in an office. That’s great, but it means their advice is going to be geared toward similar folks. What about folks like me who are in a relationship and have an art degree? Or someone who is married with no BA but a lot of carpentry skills? Or someone who is single but doesn’t have a good job? I feel that the travel niche is, in many ways, becoming more selective in the breadth of its advice, rather than becoming more inclusive. It’s not a good trend.
In your mention of debt, I think you have hit on one of the many contradictions I see in the field. Most folks say “pay off your debt as soon as you can!”, while also saying “don’t work a job you hate!” and “travel the world asap” in the same breath. If you have a significant amount of debt for any reason, you’re not going to be able to do all three. Many of these folks seem to have never been under a significant amount of debt (Man Vs. Debt excepted) and so the concept is rather abstract to them, thus leading to poor advice-giving ability in that area.
@Floreta: Yeah, I have the same quandry. I find some of the blogs within the travel/lifestyle category to be obnoxious and condescending, so my initial reaction is to not associate myself with that group, but on the other hand, I am very much into helping folks lead happier lives, and very much into travel, so…I feel that I have to. Not entirely sure yet quite where I fit. Like you suggested, maybe my place is to help bring about change.
This is a very interesting article. I agree with you that there is too much advice on the exact same topic nowadays and, for my part, I have started skipping over a lot of these articles.
For my part, I just want to focus on providing photography and writing about places and food around the world. In many ways, I feel that travel blogging has become more about telling people how to travel rather than what there is to see, do, and eat. I don’t want to tell people how to live their lives — there are plenty of lifestyle gurus out there — but if readers are interested in travel and food, hopefully, they will find something beautiful and unique on our site. The difference, I think, is between watching Oprah who tells you how to make a change in your life and watching Anthony Bourdain who tells you what to see. For my part, I have never watched an Oprah episode but we are totally addicted to No Reservations.
@Akila: Yes, it feels increasingly as if travel blogging is becoming a resource for those who *want* to travel, rather than those who *are* traveling already. That niche seems to be a little lacking.
Also, great point about Oprah vs. Bourdain. I think too many people are trying to be Oprah, and too few are taking the risks to try and be Bourdain. I’m hoping to be a Bourdain with my Mongolian Experiment that is set to launch sometime in the next couple weeks.
I guess I very much fit the mold you’ve described, but the non-comformist inside really appreciates the challenge of not repeating what’s going on in other travel blogs.
Thanks for throwing down the gauntlet and getting me thinking.
You have given some advice to bloggers that have quit the corporate world, because it seems to you that their message is overly trite. However, these simple messages remain lost on the majority of Americans. These blogs have value, if only to bring the message to the masses. If you pride yourself on not being brought up with a materialist mindset, consider that not everyone has had the “luxury” that you have had in this respect.
And even if a blogger thinks (s)he is onto something profound (when in reality he is not), and even if no one else is getting any real value out of the blog, nonetheless it can at least be said that writing about this experience serves as a sort of catharsis for the person. They broke out of the corporate world, and for them it’s one of their finest moments. So let them write about it…good on them!
I never said those blogs did not have value, nor did I say they shouldn’t write about breaking out of the corporate world.
I said that they should consider offering advice to a wider range of potential audience. What I mean by this is that, as I said in the post (you may want to go back and re-read it, since it seems you missed a bit), there are many bloggers out there whose *only* advice seems to be to quit the corporate world and sell your belongings to travel. While that is indeed good advice for many, and a wake-up call that most Americans could do well with, it does not apply to all. Many bloggers profess to try and help “everyone” travel the world, when in reality their advice can only apply to a small selection of people. If they truly do want to help a wider range of people, they should think about people in situations other than their own, and try to write at least a few things that could help a wider range of people, based on what they have learned in their own travels or, hell, from researching on the internet.
What I see happening right now in the travel blogger world is that everyone seems to be copycatting the same pattern. If it helps someone break out of the cubicle world, then great, but you have to move past that eventually unless you want to be a carbon copy of every other travel blogger out there. A similar situation has occurred in the lifestyle design blog category as well.
I think “Many bloggers profess to try and help “everyone” travel the world, when in reality their advice can only apply to a small selection of people,” is a rather baseless assertion. Most bloggers are simply chronicling their _own_ journey and presenting it in a form that other people who find themselves in the same situation can learn from.
“The purpose of this entry was to call attention to the common travel blogger habit of not really looking all that far beyond their own experiences.”
I’m not sure exactly how they’re supposed to achieve that. This is like me berating you for not writing enough about the corporate world. People have dedicated the better part of their lives to a certain amount of achievement (whether you think its right or wrong to do so) and they’d probably resent your complaint that they should do more to help people who shun their way of life.
Be the change you want to see in the world. Don’t make others do it for you. Everyone I know who has gone from your position to one of long term (I have one friend who’s been away for 8 years now) has simply put their mind to it and done it without blogging about it.
Rather than being frustrated because no one else is blogging about something, you should keep it to yourself and then share the results of your action.
But that’s the beauty of the internet. Everyone is pretty much allowed the space to do what they want, and others are generally free to comment on it.
It’s not baseless at all. If you spend a lot of time reading blogs in the travel community and especially the lifestyle design community (there’s a lot of overlap, so I’m including both), you will notice that many folks tend to style themselves as experts or authorities in the fields of travel and/or lifestyle design. As Nomadic Chick said, if you’re going to speak with authority and present your own experiences as something to learn from, then it’s your responsibility as an author to try and help your readers reach their similar goals.
I’m not sure you entirely understood my post. The purpose of this post is to make folks realize that many blogs out there end up parroting the same advice over and over, without even considering writing things that might help a different set of people. It’s entirely possible to help people who are in a different situation than you are. Just because I don’t work in a corporate job doesn’t mean I don’t have life experiences that would help me advise them on how to be happier at work, and just because a corporate worker hasn’t ever worked customer service doesn’t mean that they probably don’t have advice that would be good for me in return. You don’t have to be an expert in someone’s situation to help them with it, but if you style yourself as an expert in something, you sure as hell better be prepared for folks to come to you with variants.
It seems that you have written this post without really reading my blog, which was a mistake, and sort of invalidates your jugements of my writing. You tell me to “be the change [I] want to be in the world”. I am. I have lived nomadically, traveling around the US and Canada, for a year. I have lived in Switzerland on $20 a day. I have lived and worked in Korea. In 2011 I will be going to Mongolia to do journalism work. I have my own stuff going on, done through my own methods. But on this blog, I don’t just tell people how I do it, I try and help my readers figure out what will work best for them, and try and find solutions for their unique situations. If you’ll notice, in my travel and lifestyle design posts I write not only about how I accomplish things, but I also offer other alternatives that might work better for other folks. Instead of just sharing the results of my efforts, I try to help others figure out how to better themselves, without telling them to “do it [my] way”.
Hi there,
Found your article through Nomadic Chick’s recent post, though I think we have bumped into each other on Twitter.
Firstly, I like what you’ve wrote. I read it twice. Not because of content per say(though still good), moreover because someone out there actually sat down to write something like this.
I am in agreement with you. There are indeed too many blogs/sites murmuring the same message. Break the Cubicle, sell up and go.
I will acknowledge the fact that some people have no choice but to work in the corporate environment. As a means to an end. Sometimes there is no alternative. I’ve been there myself.
However there are plenty of us out there that haven’t even had that good a start.
I started my dream as a child in a not so good environment, and worked many a strange job, and sacrificed a lot to do what I am doing now. Does that make me special either? No. Millions of people around the world work many types of jobs, clawing their way out to a better life.
Having been there, done that, would we go back to any job if we had too? The dream is no, but the reality of putting food on the table says yes.
Unless perhaps we make an insurmountable sacrifice, which some have.
Does such a lifestyle “click” with everyone you talk with? No. And, it never will. Much like many people cannot fathom how a year of true travel is worth more than a year in college.
This includes some travelers / bloggers too I might add.
Lifestyle choice is personal. If one hunts around long enough you will find others, yet they too will have different perspectives on things. Especially true the older we get.
Either way, it’s nice to read an article that bucks the trend of the “flash blogger” posts that cover the globe these days.
Dave
Oh, I read what you wrote, and considering how many people didn’t seem to get it, I guess maybe it didn’t come across as clearly as you thought it might have.
Actually, considering that only 3-4 people out of my 25+ commenters seemed to be unclear…I’d say that it seems to have been pretty comprehensible. Also, note that I didn’t say that you hadn’t read the blog entry, but that you had not read any of the rest of my blog. A comment without context is not informed commentary.
” Also, note that I didn’t say that you hadn’t read the blog entry, but that you had not read any of the rest of my blog. A comment without context is not informed commentary.”
Fair enough. This is why I’ve been flipping through your archives this morning.
Finally, someone has written a travel blog article that really resonates with me. Too often, I find myself frustrated and depressed when reading other blogs because it seems the only way to make money to travel continuously and live the lifestyle I want to live is to make the big bucks in the corporate world and then quit.
I do not have now nor have I ever had any interest in joining the corporate world. Yet, I did buy into the idea that a college education was something worthwhile and now find myself with mountains of student loan and credit card debt (mostly acquired from long periods of unemployment and trying to survive on underpaid jobs). That being said, what I read on most lifestyle travel blogs leads me to believe my dreams are out of reach.
Where are the blogs that speak to someone who is anti-corporation but interested in following her own path, grew up lower middle class in a family that never had the means to travel, never took a gap year or spring breaked in Cancun?? It feels like being shut out of a elite club I’ll never be afforded access to. Yet they make it sound so simple, so easy.
Instead of being the first person in my family with a college degree, I would rather be the first person who followed her heart and got out and saw the world. But how??
My degree (when I finish) will be in comparative world literature (not exactly marketable or one that would afford me access into the corporate world but I believe in education for personal enrichment not as a means to an end). I love writing and photography. My dream is to move to New Zealand (or at least live there semi-permanently), but I’ve never been able to find any solid answers as to how to get there (financially) without sacrificing my ideals and joining the corporate world. This blog makes it seem slightly more possible though.
Hats off to you for speaking to the rest of us.
I enjoyed your POV on the subject. LOL. At first I felt similar to you on the topic- always been an artist/freelancer, never $$$table enough to “just” travel. My Korea EFL teaching choice puts me in my 1st “9-5 employee/non-gig situation” in… well, I think it’s actually my “1st” & that idea alone inspires stress for me. Cubicle workers cutting loose to travel always seemed to have a nice financial cushion & digital nomads just seemed to fall into the category yr already struggling w/ as a freelancer… Who to look for for advice or ideas?
Artists/travelers are more rare than cubicle lifestyle dwellers & we don’t always blog bc we’ve got our own art focus. Hence, why there seems to be many ex-corporate bloggers suddenly finding their creative expression & why as an artist yr always going to feel like a marginally touched upon category. “IT ALWAYS WAS…” You made yr pact w/ yr devil early off- life will be a $$$downslide in exchange for the pursuit of passion… self-reflection was/is always.
In the creative world, there’s NEVER been a one-size-fits-all rule. We’ve always created our “own” rule/designers of an individual path but we do seek inspiration and role models at times. We’re all in different stages tho & some are only learning stage 1 of an artist/traveler’s path now. Each individual IS an expert– but of their own art, their stage in life and the lifestyle they come from. That’s just an opinion tho.