Our Travel Blogging Year in Review {2019}
After our year filled with whirlwind adventures, this natural wind blown look feels appropriate! Selfie taken at the Upper Bakkara Gardens overlooking Valletta Harbor, Valletta, Malta.
UPDATED: 2/5/2023
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2019 was a big year for us as we officially launched our blog with the first post on March 4th! We also celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary on July 4th in Scotland. With 2020 on the horizon, we decided to sit down and reflect on this journey we’ve been on.
In retrospect, it seems surprising we never thought about travel blogging given our love of travel, writing, photography, and reading (often travel-inspired or travel-related). Writing the blog, sharing our experiences and travel stories with our readers, and working together on this creative endeavor have brought yes, more work, but also more fulfillment to our day-to-day lives.
Fun fact: We fondly abbreviate To Make Much of Time as TMMoT, pronounced like the British version of ‘tomato’ without the ‘o’.
It was apropos that the first blog we published was about Iceland since it was our Ring Road trip in mid-summer 2018 that led to the creation of this blog in the first place. Shortly after returning from that trip, we started talking about creating a blog. In its infancy, To Make Much of Time looked minimally creative and mostly an effort in workplans, studying up on all sorts of practical components of setting up a blog, and deciding how to structure the site in a way that would create a consistent and user friendly approach for our readers but be able to grow with us.
Perhaps most importantly, we wanted to set ourselves up to be successful with the blog. Most people who start blogging lose momentum in less than 6 months. I imagine the recesses of the internet are cluttered with orphaned blogs. Lindsey has a full-time career at a global professional services firm, Dustin owns a coral propagation business (Ridgeline Aquatics), and together we are professional photographers with a focus on weddings (Lindsey McCarty Photography). As you can tell, even pre-blog, our cup runneth over!
So, in the 7 or so months between the idea of the blog and its launch, we worked tirelessly on all the organization pieces of it but also wrote a substantial number of blogs. This was probably the best decision we could have made. Once we launched the blog, we kept learning more we needed to know (anywhere from SEO to affiliate programs to kindergarten level website coding) and having blogs drafted in advance made all the difference!
Hiking the trails around Seydisfjordur, Iceland lead to absolutely amazing views! Check out our Iceland blogs HERE
2019: By the Numbers
In the 9 months since we launched our first blog post, we have published 98 blogs, which means we’re averaging just under 11 per month! Lindsey credits her liberal arts degree for her efficiency in researching, writing, and editing.
We visited 4 new countries this year: France, Scotland, Malta, and Bermuda.
We read upwards of 35 books, nearly all of them related to our current or future travels (either directly or indirectly).
We spent about 35 nights on the road on our trips.
In the 9 months our site has been up, we’ve had over 16,000 views, which is humbling.
Traveling to Paris was an amazing trip filled with excellent food, good company, and loads of art and history! Check out our Paris blogs HERE
2019: By the Connections
Fun fact: Our trip to Malta was the first we booked on a whim. We saw a great flight deal on Scott’s Cheap Flights, spent about an hour Google researching Malta, having never really heard of it before, and booked it. We’re not sure Malta would ever have gotten on our radar otherwise, and we absolutely loved this 3-island country in the Mediterranean.
Traveling in general and the community of people who travel all make the world feel so much more approachable and highlight our shared commonalities. At the same time being immersed in different cultures and histories allows us to better appreciate the diversity of thought and experience across cultures. Over the course of the year, we had endless online and in-person interactions with people bonding over the shared love of travel and new experiences. It is these interactions that we love and their impact is priceless!
Whenever our readers comment on one of our blogs or social media sites to share how helpful or interesting one of our posts is or offer their own reactions or advice, it’s hard to explain how happy that makes us.
Just a few stories about people we connected with this year:
We met a man in the Reykjavik airport on our layover back from Paris. He had just finished a trip in Iceland with friends and was returning home to Toronto solo. While waiting for our separate flights, we spent probably half an hour chatting about our different experiences in Iceland and getting ideas for our next trip.
We got to know another traveling couple, who live in the UK are are focused on travel documentaries, and featured them and their documentary as our first guest post. We found ourselves inspired by their trip to somewhere we’ve never been - Mexico (which is actually funny given how much closer that country is to us!).
After searching for interesting books to read before our trip to Bermuda and coming up mostly empty handed, I contacted the local tourism board for suggestions and never heard back. So, I took to Twitter, and a man recommended a book that looked completely fascinating and up my alley. I immediately ordered it, and I would say it was one of my favorite travel-related books of this past year. (For those wondering, the book was A Brave Vessel: A True Tale of the Castaways Who Rescued Jamestown by Hobson Woodward.)
One of the most unique and otherworldly places we’ve visited so far, the Fairy Glen in Skye, Scotland both brings you closer to nature and makes you feel like you are in another world. Check out our Scotland blogs HERE.
The world always has and always will have a lot of problems, which is not to minimize any of them. But in today’s world with the increased focus on differences between people and anger spouted easily online, it has been wonderful to be reminded of the overall kindness and natural similarities of people.
Fun fact: Our blog name comes from Robert Herrick’s 17th century poem To the Virgins to Make Much of Time, a tongue-in-cheek alternative to carpe diem, or seize the day. You can read the poem here.
We recognize how fortunate and privileged we are to be able to travel like we do. We’re appreciative of all the things in our lives that make this possible - from a generous vacation policy at Lindsey’s employer to the staff at Vinton Vet, who take good care of our 4 pups when we’re gone, to having grown up with parents who taught us the love of learning, reading, and travel.
We recognize time, health, and opportunity can be fleeting and try to live our lives to the fullest while we can, hence our blog name: To Make Much of Time. If we make even the smallest impact to enhance others’ lives through telling our stories, we will count this blog in the success category.
We can’t wait to see what 2020 has in store! If you don’t already follow along, consider signing up for our monthly newsletter or following us on your social media platform of choice: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.
Thank you for sharing this ride with us!
Lindsey + Dustin
Saying “thank you” from inside an ancient burial cairn at Clava Cairns, Scotland! Read the blog HERE
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