Welcome to the new and improved “The Journey of Christine”! If you’re new around here, welcome! I’m Christine and started this blog back in the fall of 2014. It has gone through several makeovers, a name change, a hiatus (or two) and most recently, a WordPress migration and rebranding!

Within the last 6 years, blogging has changed so much. When I look back at my older posts, I laugh and cringe at some of the things I wrote, and my photography and editing skills were totally subpar. Even with all of that, I truly enjoyed blogging each week. I would crank out 1-2 posts weekly, and I never missed a linkup. Shout out to the Travel Tuesday linkup!

Somewhere between then and now, I noticed a shift in the blogging world. I felt like more and more posts started feeling more and more like articles. Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against making money from blogging (that’s the goal for most bloggers, including myself), but what I loved most about blogging “back in the day” was reading about everyone’s personal experiences. From how you spent your 30th birthday in Paris to what you did during your London babymoon, I felt like I was reading something authentic. The good news is that a lot of the bloggers I met back in 2014-2016 still blog this way today.

When I noticed this shift, I felt less and less motivated to blog. I had plenty of trips to write about, I just didn’t know how to write them. The few posts I did publish at the end of last year took forever to write, and I felt like I was just going through the motions. I wasn’t sure how I could tell a story, and at the same time, list the “top 5 places you have to visit in Utah”!

This brings me to present day, well actually to the end of March. I’ve been quarantining and working from home for a couple of weeks and thought to myself, this would be the perfect time to freshen up the blog. I’ve always wanted to move my blog from Blogger to WordPress and knew it would take some time, so why not do it when I’ll be at home all day plus travel is at a literal standstill. My goal is for this to jump start my motivation and bring back the joy I had for blogging.

After doing some research and browsing through hundreds of themes, I decided to use Siteground to host my site and bought a theme from Hello You Designs. Since most of my posts are photograph heavy, I wanted a theme that highlighted a few of my favorite images throughout my website.

I’ve spruced up my About page and even though my Destinations page is still a work in progress, I love all the images representing all the different countries. To be fair, don’t be surprise if my theme changes in 3 months. I remember when I started my Blogger blog, I changed the theme every other month until I found one I loved.

There’s definitely a learning curve with WordPress, but I’m slowly catching on. I love being able to control more aspects of my site, and the fact that I own all my content now is great! If you have any tips, especially for someone just starting off in WordPress, please let me know!

Moving forward, I’m going to blog my way. This site has always been my creative outlet, and I don’t want that to feel like a chore. The way 2020 has been going this might be stupid or naive, but I’m very optimistic for the rest of the year. Lyndon and I started talking about all the things we want to do in 2021 and all the places we want to go, especially since we had to cancel most of our trips this year. I’m ready to plan, just waiting on other countries to let us in, ha!

I’m super excited for the future of The Journey of Christine and I hope you stay for the ride!