Welcome back!

This weeks POTW Comes from…drum roll please…Alan at 9to5alternative. 

“This sunset photo is from Istanbul, Turkey, and I took this last summer. LOVE that city.  You should definitely visit.  Alan.”

We have in fact already been to Turkey, not to Istanbul though.  I would go back again as it was a really interesting country, but I don’t think we’ll tag it on to the RTW trip.  Europe is quite accessible and cheap from where we live so it’s probably a place we would cram in to a few weeks after the RTW trip (if we come back hehe).

A beautiful photo, I especially love the composition with the bird about to fly accross the sun!

Entries are already lining up for next week so if you’d like to join in just email me a picture.  Go on…you know you want to!

I would just like to apologise for my slack posting / commenting this week!  I’ve been extremely busy!!  (Note to self - must try harder this week!). 

This is a Long One – You’ve Been Warned

Before I even signed up for my domain name and was only just about considering the idea of getting myself one of these new-fangled blog things, I spent hours upon hours Googling “travel blog”, “personal travel blog”, “my travel blog”, “things I wish I’d known before travelling” and more….pretty much to no avail.  It’s quite soul destroying to never actually find what you’re looking for.  The only things that ever came up were sites such as blogger.com, travelblog.org, travelpod.com, statravelblogs.com – the list is endless!!

I had decided even before Googling commenced that I didn’t want my site to be part of one of the big blog publishing systems / sites.  My reasons for this may be unsubstantiated but this was mainly wanting the rights to my own blog – I didn’t want someone else to have any kind of ownership over it (I may have been reading that wrong and it might not be true but), I’m not saying my writing / posts will ever be that great that someone else will want to claim and publish them, but if it comes from my head / heart then it should belong to me.  I also didn’t want something standardised, something that looked like every other mass produced blog template out there.  I had no clue what I was doing, not even knowing what Wordpress was before I tripped over it on Google (again, I do seem to love Google) but I knew I wanted to go it alone.  I’m glad I made that decision and persevered by myself!

So, eventually the first really good travel related site I found was The Art of Nonconformity!  I think I must have literally tripped over this site a few times but this one came along when I Googled something along the lines of “things I wish I’d known before travelling”. NOTE I wouldn’t openly admit this to anyone I know (so keep it to yourselves hehe) but I have somewhat of an addictive personality and once I find something I like then I like it to death (not until I die, but I like it way too much – in the way you can play a song you love so much you slowly begin to hate it, I am my own worst enemy).  Thankfully Chris’ blog (TAONC) had captured my attention slightly differently.  It was all the information I wanted before I even knew I wanted it.  Each time a question popped into my (often vacant) head, Chris had the answer for me! 

Luckily for Chris, before I could become addicted (and things got out of control!), I found another great blog by Justin Wright.  Obviously (my somewhat addictive personality ensures that I still) read every post by Chris but Life of Justin is completely different. It isn’t really a travel blog (correct me if I’m wrong though as I haven’t delved into the archives much as of yet) but has given me some great info on blogging, plugins, social networking and more as well as a personal insight into someone’s life that is totally different to my own (I guess I’m quite nosey too).  These were pretty much my first blog experiences (yes, I know, it’s a little late in life for me as I’ve had the internet since I was 11 and the only blog site I’d actually ever checked out was Perez Hilton – please don’t laugh at me!) and so it was quite a novelty to be sneaking a peek into someone’s life that hadn’t involved me going to a bookshop and paying for the privilege.

No Stopping Me Now!

By some kind of miracle the next site I found was pretty much all of the blogs I’d been hunting for wrapped up in one great big birthday wrapped gift for me, that may be a little exaggerated, but I was pretty pleased to find it!

The Travel Blog Exchange was perfect for my needs!  I just wanted to be able to click on something and find a myriad of personal blogs (travel related or not) that the owners had really made an effort with, whether they had web design / blogging / writing experience or not.  I clearly have no experience at any of those things and could quite easily have just signed up to a blog publishing site – but I took the high road and made the effort so I can appreciate these more, in my mind anyway.

Anyway, through TBEX I have (amazingly) increased my site traffic, made friends, learnt a lot about the blogospere (which I now know it’s called) and viewed lots and lots of sites with countless amounts of information that will give me more knowledge when planning our trip. 

Today, I love the internet and all bloggers everywhere!  (Slightly scared that I’m so chirpy today!).  My advice to anyone who (for reasons unknown to me) reads this is to join TBEX, it’s a great community that’s growing fast and I hope they do really well!

Love Jen (apparently powered by Google!)

I tried to learn shorthand a few years ago - I got as far as the alphabet (which I can still just about write down)  and then got bored with it or maybe I just wasn’t sufficiently motivated to learn!

After reading a recent post on note taking on lifeofjustin.com I realised that this is actually something I do.   I tend to opt for ridiculously small handbags that will barely fit my phone, keys and contents of my purse so taking an actual notebook just isn’t viable (ok, so I could change and get a bigger bag, but seriously, would I actually get the thing out and write in it?  I’d need to fit a pen in as well!). 

So I don’t necesarily take notes conventionally but I still do it without even realising it is actually note taking. You’d think I would realise I was officially taking notesas I use the “notes” application on my Iphone - I do sometimes wonder how I managed to get this far in life!

I don’t think there is a generic way to take notes and mine is more like brainstorming; a random list of words (to someone else) that actually draw out my trail of thought and will make me remember what I had wanted to do!  For example, one of my note sections is a list of plugins I’ve heard of that want to try for this site or simply a list of things I want to try and do on the site and therefore I need to hunt out a plugin to do said task - without making a note of it I would definitely forget by the time I got home!

Another section is with regards to travel destinations!  The one I love the most!  This is a simple list of the basic itinerary I hope to follow but also countries / sights people mention or I read about that I want to look up at a later time.

Taking notes is so easy and simple to do and is definitely not a thing of the past - even if you do it digitally instead of with a pen and paper!

I recently came across this website http://chrisguillebeau.com/3×5/, whilst spending a miserable rainy afternoon Goolging anything travel related to brighten the day a bit.  Most things I Google seem to get me nowhere as they tend to be irrelevant or just want you to buy things you don’t need and so I end up getting bored / fed up and giving up.  This however was much different.

After reading the site for the first time and finding out what days new posts were uploaded I could not wait for the next (and that’s very unlike me!).  So a few days later the How To Be Awsome post was up and I was really excited because after reading it I actually felt inspired to starting doing something instead of waiting for someone else to do it!  Although we’ve been talking about travelling it’s always been “when the house is ready” and because I am (officially) a bit useless when it comes to DIY I leave it all to Jamie (who is a builder so in my head it always made sense). 

There is a chance (the back of my mind is telling me) that the “when the house is ready” line was used a little too frequently to give me something to talk to people about (i.e. travelling) but also as a delaying / diversion tactic so I didn’t have to leave the safety of what I know for the scariest but most amazing trip of my life (part of me was thinking there is the smallest chance in the world I could win the lottery so then I could have the whole thing planned for me!)….but no more!

This epiphany has come somewhat late in the day as our house is almost finished but I do intend on making the most of my new found enthusiasm and determination to get moving!! 

So…here is the list of things to do (this list is actually going to be pretty short for now as I need more time to think about it, but there are a few obvious things that I need to start with)….

1  Help Jamie finish the house!

2  Find a tenant

3  Find Tatty a home (Tatty is a new fixture in the house - a stray cat who has become very fond of us - I think he’s deserves his own post tomorrow!)

4  Move out - to our respective parents houses (depressing but definitely required!)

5  Start saving

6  Save enough for tickets

7  Pick a route - most of this is actually done, but we need to work out the cost

8  Save more (and more and more and more)

So, this is the list for now and I will let you know how I get on!

Woo hoo….I will soon be awesome (in a non-work related way!)