This post comes from a place of being a blogger for many years.  I’ve been feeling….off….about my content and social media accounts for some time now.  After our trauma almost 3 years ago, I all but left Facebook.  It was so negative at a time I just couldn’t absorb negativity at all.  I still have an account that I use to access groups, handle business related things for several businesses and I like to crowdsource travel ideas there.  Otherwise, I am just not there that much.  One of my big regrets is that over the course of 9ish years I’ve given them so much of my content, so many memories.  As I pulled away from Facebook after the trauma, I really didn’t fully re-enter social media until we launched in to full time travel.  At that point Facebook annoyed me with their algorithm and suppression of things I really wanted to see.  I knew I didn’t want to put my focus there.  So I cleared out a quiet Instagram account I had sitting around for Life in Motion.  I started posting our travel adventures there because it was fast and easily done from my phone while we moved around a lot.  I can tell you that 2+ years in, I really regret that decision.  I was so overwhelmed, I understand why I made that decision.  I had largely lost my voice to trauma and it was easier to just post a quick pic without feeling or words or admitting that I was not ok.  I love Instagram.  The lack of drama (most of the time), the inspiration, the photos.  It just feels better when I login vs. Facebook.  It’s better for my mental health.  And even though I have regrets about planting all of my content there, I still love it.  I just wish that instead of treating it as the whole content wheelhouse, I had used it as a tool within a wheelhouse that included blogging too.

So, after a lot of thought, I’ve decided to reclaim all that Instagram content – I am moving it all over to this blog.  I researched ways to import and figured that out – but I’m so picky about the images and Instagram compresses them a lot.  And they just looked awful.  So I’m doing it manually.  It’s a huge job!  I have made it through several hundred posts so far, all the way to the end of April 2018.  Slow and steady, it’ll all get done.  The best part is that I’m finding even more travel photos to share in each post, images filed away in folders are seeing new light!

Thankfully all of our Youtube videos (over 100!) from the last 2 years moved over easily and that is already done.  I think I’m really going to love having all our content in one place that already feels like home.  Will I still be on Instagram?  YES!  Are we still posting videos on Youtube?  YES!  But my main focus will be blogging here again.  Our goal has, and will always be, capturing memories for our family.  My older kids are at an age where they love searching old posts here to read about their younger years.  I want my other kids to have that too.  I don’t want them to have to go search for old obscure accounts to see their memories.  Who knows what will happen to Instagram or Facebook, etc by the time they are my age.  I want to invest in us, not the latest app or social media platform.  So I am reclaiming my corner of the www.  I know that blogs largely fell off the radar after google reader died, but I hope you’ll stop by every now and then to see what we are up to!  I will not only be blogging here regularly with our travel content, you can also follow my new 365 Project.

So, here we are.  This is where you can always find us.