Wow. Things sure look different around here this morning! If you didn’t see the warning in the last post were are probably pretty shocked when you clicked over to Twenty-Something Travel (or possibly Forks and Footprints) and ended up here.
Surprise!
Contents
What happened??
I got old is what happened! Well among other things. For years I have been complaining about my branding problem. Twenty-Something Travel was a lovely blog, but I started it when I was 25 years old, single, and planning to backpack around the world by myself. Now I’m 32, with a husband and dog and baby, and while I’m still dedicated to travel, my lifestyle looks pretty different. I literally outgrew my blog, and I didn’t know what to do about it.
Enter Megan. Megan and I met at the Milwaukee BlogHouse, and I could tell right away this girl was something else. I hired her to write for me and give the blog a new perspective and she really has. During my maternity leave this fall we started talking about the idea of doing something bigger, together. Like… as partners.
That thing is Why Wait to See the World. We’ve been going back and forth for months, her in London and me in Seattle, while we put together the pieces of this new site. It’s a rebranding and reincarnation of Twenty-Something Travel, and all that content is still here, but it’s something more. It’s a travel magazine for Millennials, chock full of information on why and how to live your best travel life.
Why “Why Wait?”
It took me forever to think of a new site name, and it turns out it was in front of my face the entire time. Longtime readers will recognize the new name as the former tagline of Twenty-Something Travel. I like that continuity as well as the fact that it take’s the focus off of age (which is ever-changing anyways) and puts it back on the message, which has always been the same.
Why Wait is about getting you out from behind your computer and off to see the world. While there are obviously many legitimate reasons why travel has to be put on the back burner, there are also many, many excuses. Our goal at Why Wait is to give you the tools you need to transform your travel dreams into reality.
What Has Changed?
- We multiplied– Well for starters there are now two of us. Megan and I are going ahead as co-editors of the new site- a serious commitment second only to marriage (don’t be scared Megan). I’m pretty psyched about this as blogging can be lonely work and it’s great to have someone to bounce ideas off of. Plus, two of us can get way more work done than one.
- We’ve got a new look– As you can tell, we’ve had a serious facelift, courtesy of that wonderful tech guy I’m married too. I am so excited about the new site, with it’s clean lines and enormous photos. Have a poke around, just know we are still working out the kinks.
- We grew! We’ve also got a ton of NEW content. We’ve integrated the best posts from Megan’s site as well as a host of juicy old posts from Art of Adventuring (Mike wasn’t really using them anymore). We now have literally thousands of posts on a variety of subjects, as well as travel information on 75 different countries (!), and we’re always traveling and adding more.
We have to manually move all the content so this is taking a little while. The content will be rolling out over the next month or so. - We organized– All of that information should be easier to find thanks to the new organizational system. Using the header bar you can now easily find resources on different types of travel as well as travel tips and advice. There is of course an entire section dedicated to culinary travel because Megan and I really like to #eattheworld. Best of all, the destinations menu will take you to the dedicated destination pages which are sub-divided into individual countries.
- We are expanding our focus- You will still get to read personal travel stories and essays from Megan and myself, but we are also opening up the website to include posts from all kinds of travel experts, particularly those with knowledge of off the beaten path locales. You can find our new submission page above.
- Our social media handles have changed! If you were already following TST on Facebook and Twitter then you don’t have to do a thing, but the Instagram account is a new one (mine is overrun by baby pictures anyways).
Here are the new handles:
Lastly, our mailing list has changed. If you were subscribed to either the Twenty-Something Travel or Forks and Footprints newsletters, those will quickly be defunct. To keep up with the site, you will need to re-sign up over here.
Change is Scary
Ugh I know. That’s why it took me so long to take action. But, although change is hard and scary, it also beats staying the same. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from 7, going on 8 years of travel blogging, it’s that nothing is permanent and change is inevitable. You can fight it, but it’s far better to just lean in and embrace it.
I am as always eternally grateful to those of you who have been reading my work for a long time. It’s been a long and windy road up to this point and I’m sure there are more twists and turns ahead, but blogging has been a constant for me, and I have no intention of stopping anytime soon. Hopefully if we do this thing right, Why Wait will maintain the authenticity and personality that made you start reading, while providing even more useful resources and tools to keep you traveling. Because that’s what we all really want, right?
