When I try to introduce my latest business as a travel blogger, I am received with envy and enthusiasm: oh, you are one of those people who are always on the road and even sometimes get paid (not the case here) for discovering fancy places, tasting exceptional meals and sleeping in gorgeous hotels? And what are you doing the whole day? Taking pictures that you post on Pinterest or on Twitter? What a cool life do you have?
I recognize that I love a lot my life, especially after I decided that the only person that it is worth to work for it’s only me. As I am a special case of multi-tasking: sometimes I pin, tweet, or write 2 words while listening to some podcast, simply because I can, the life in the social media realm suits me very well. Writing and taking pictures are also part of my old passions that fuelled my early dreams of a career, in my early teenage years. Plus, sometimes I can do good PR tricks as I did some constant work in this domain for a couple of years. I have a lot of interests that I am sharing between my different blogs and social media profile and I am more than happy with this. Thanks to my academic background I am able to access a lot of historical and sociological information that, I hope, gives a different spin to my posts.
But the only thing I am not allowed to say about this life is that it is easy and the rewards are instant. Behind every trip it is a lot of work and documentation, photo editing and selection. As I do not have the whole time in the world to do it, I need to set up the right schedule in order to get the best of my travel experience. Plus, don’t forget that I am trying to be as informative as possible and thus, my posts are not exercises of self-admiration but are aimed to offer information for anyone interested to see a new place, not necessarily one featured in the big travel magazines. I am permanently hunting new topics, sending mails in order to get the access to new locations and trying to get in touch with the right people for advice, inspiration and guidance. I need to introduce each month new products and new features on the blogs, to improve the quality and the technical appearance of all my social media products. From time to time, I also need a new camera and a better computer meaning that I should be able to get new reliable sources of income.
I spend at least 40 hours the week with writing, reading, reviewing, updating and editing, as well as preparing and planning new posts. There it is a lot to learn, mainly in terms of social media and proper SEO and every single steps ahead is the result of intensive work, work and work.
Life is not easy, but at least I try to make it pleasant. Since I am back in the writing business I am happier than ever and will never regret the decision to get out of the corporate life. There are many travel bloggers and freelance writers saying almost the same so it must be a certain true in this determination.
Ilana on the road 
I finally quit my retail job recently and am going to be relying on photography and blogging. It’s a lot of work for sure. Late nights on the computer are a regular thing.
Also, if you’re on the computer, you’re not traveling and getting more to write about. If you’re traveling, you’re not on the computer making things happen. Oy vey lol
Exactly 🙂