On 4 Years of Blogging

I took a 7-month hiatus from this blog (August 2020 - March 2021) because let’s face it: last year was hard for a lot of us. It was hard for me, it was hard for everybody, and it was very hard to find the motivation to post here. What follows below is the only post that I attempted during my hiatus.

I have had this post drafted since December 10, 2020 (see date on the left side) - much closer to my actual 4th blogiversary of late November 2020.

Life Lately

What a year.

Having a travel blog during an international pandemic is ironic. Why on earth would I create travel content when I can’t go anywhere and no one else can either? Emmett and I had planned to spend most of this year working on our school bus to tiny home conversion anyway, we’ve been fortunate enough to be able to distract ourselves with this project on and off during this slow anxiety-inducing year. Other than spitting out a guide to the street art of Richmond back in January when COVID was less present in my life, I’ve only posted about the bus on this blog.

Many times I thought about doing a guide to “having a staycation at home” but it felt so trite. Lockdown never felt like a staycation. Lockdown felt surreal and depressing. I was furloughed from my job and Emmett had to keep going to work. We weren’t a part of the privileged class who bonded over the transition from office to working from home all the time. We were worried about our finances, we were worried about our health, we were worried about the health of loved ones with co-morbidities.

During the lockdown, I did manage to read a couple of books, practice a heck of a lot of Spanish on Duolingo, be one of the millions who started their own sourdough culture, and I watched way too much TV. For much of lockdown though, I forced myself to focus on the bus build to keep my mind off of my extended panic attack about the state of the world around me.

And that’s just what happened during lockdown! Lockdown here in Virginia only lasted from March to June 2020. Without sharing too much, the rest of the year was worse personally - it brought the loss of a couple of loved ones and more frustrations & setbacks regarding the bus conversion than I can count. Not to mention a harrowing and infuriating presidential election cycle amidst constant news of more and more people lost as the pandemic raged on. And the pandemic still rages on!

Magnolia blossoms in the Fan district of Richmond — I took this picture in March 2020 before Lockdown began.

What’s next for Savvy Dispatches?

It is so weird to have a blog that is 4 years old! I can’t believe it’s been that long.

Four years into publishing content on this platform and I continue to feel like I have a strange relationship with the internet. I still dislike the self-promotion necessary to be “seen” in this industry and in the greater world of Social Media and Search Engine Optimization. My readership is low in comparison to similar sites. This project is really just for me to have some sort of creative outlet, even if it does feel like talking into a void sometimes.

It can be strange to be online; some virtual communities feel quite toxic. Deleting my personal Facebook profile back in October has alleviated some of that stress for me, though.

What’s next for this blog? I don’t know, really. I still enjoy posting on this website, though, so I reckon I will keep it around.