Celebrating Four Years of My Blog, Battered Suitcase

This post is a few weeks late, but I didn’t want to interrupt my series on our European trip. Now, however, I want to look back at these last four years of blogging. The actual day of my first post of Battered Suitcase was July 29, 2019. My first article was “Why Travel?” which has served as a bit of a guide to my posts over the years. My goal has been to help travelers have information on a variety of travel experiences so that they can feel more confident traveling in the world.

While I was nervous as well as somewhat excited to start a blog, I found the first few months of blogging to be fun and a real learning experience. Eight months later COVID hit, travel shut down, and I still had a blog to write. My stated intent was to produce a blog post every Wednesday so I had to really reach deep to fulfill that commitment. I don’t like to write about experiences from long ago. I feel I have forgotten the details, and the post becomes very general. However, I haven’t always had the choice, and writing during COVID was definitely a challenge.

Even recently I reached back to share my experiences of nearly 50 years ago as a teacher in the Dominican Republic. In that series I was reminded of some of my experiences by reading letters I had written to my parents. My mom had saved all my letters home from when I left for college through my time in the Dominican Republic. It was actually quite interesting to pull those out of the box and read them. There were some things in there I had completely forgotten about. There were also things I remember that I never mentioned. I guess one never tells one’s parents everything.

Over the course of time those of you who have been with me for a while may have noticed some changes I have made in the appearance of my blog. My original design had a large image of a brown suitcase in the left hand corner to go with the theme of a battered suitcase. However, I didn’t like the brown. I felt it made the page look dated so last year I took it out and just left it green. I feel that the look is cleaner now and looks more modern although certainly not trendy.

Another change I made last year was with the cover photo at the top of each blog. One of the programs I use to process my photos offers a lot of presets that can change photos in various ways. It can give them a unique look, sometimes artistic, sometimes just a little strange. I like to play with photos using these presets so I decided that I would make the cover photos have a different look each week. It’s been fun for me to do. My hope is the photos are a little more eye catching to draw readers in.

One of the reasons I started the blog was to be able to share my photos. Why take photos if no one sees them? For each post choosing and processing the photos is the most time consuming part of the post. I usually spend a couple of hours each day working on a post. Most of that time I am working on the photos. Learning to process digital photos has been challenging. A year ago I changed programs, and I feel more comfortable using it, but sometimes I’m still not happy with the results. When I look back at some of the photos in my early blog posts, I cringe a little bit at how they look.

One of the disappointments I have is that the number of subscribers to my blog remains pretty low, around 25. However, the number of views I have received has steadily increased. Even more encouraging is that my posts are starting to be picked up by Google search. I have been receiving emails from Google from time to time telling me how many people have clicked on a link to a post. While the numbers aren’t huge, the fact that my posts are being found is encouraging. After four years of posting weekly, I have over 200 posts online. That is a lot of information if you think about it. The result is my most recent posts are not necessarily the posts people are discovering.

It has been interesting to see over the years which posts have proved most popular. They don’t always fit with my thoughts on the posts. Some which I have written seem to not find an audience while others seem to really take off. A year ago in February we visited El Paso. For some reason my post on that proved quite popular. Over the course of last year it had 509 views which I found amazing. However, so far this year it has only had four views so there wasn’t much longevity to the post.

On the other hand, at the beginning of last year I wrote a post comparing the towns of Seaside and Cannon Beach, Oregon. It did OK last year garnering 84 views. However, interest in the post has continued. So far this year it has my third highest views at 135.

Of course my style of writing for this blog is perhaps not everyone’s favorite travel blog style. The most popular travel blog posts are usually those with titles like “The Ten Best Sites in Berlin” or “Five Must see Museums in Denver.” I admit I read those kinds of posts when I am researching where to travel. However, it’s not how I choose to write. I write more personally about my experiences. In fact I have considered changing the title of my blog to something like Steve’s Wanderings since part of my travel style is to just see what comes along.

That is not the style of my daughter Andrea who likes to know what she is going to do each day. Since she is a lover of travel, I have had her write some blog posts about her experiences. Those have proved popular as well. Her series last year on her time in Costa Rica was quite popular as well as the first post she wrote for me which summarized our trip to Iceland together.

After four years of blogging, I feel I have a pretty good weekly rhythm creating my blogs. Now when I travel, I make every effort to write a post at the end of the day of travel while things are still fresh in my mind. I don’t want to forget things. The week before I plan to post, I start working on the photos which I try to have done by Sunday. Monday I make sure all the photos are in place on the blog and do some editing. Tuesday I read the post numerous times. I keep thinking I’m done, but when I read it again, there is something else I change. Finally I post it to arrive it your email box at 6:00 am pacific time on Wednesday. Then the week starts over again.

This year the series on Europe has taken up most of the year which has been nice. I haven’t had to worry about what to write about each week. However, with that done, I need to start working on new ideas. Fortunately we have a number of travel plans coming up during the rest of the year. Hopefully it won’t be too difficult to fill the weekly obligations. Next year Silvette is planning to retire early in the year. I am anticipating that will open up even more time to be able to travel.

In the meantime I want to thank those who have continued to read and support this endeavor over the last four years. Each post does take a significant amount of time to produce. Your comments, likes, and words of encouragement help to make the effort feel like it’s worthwhile. Special kudos to Jeff and Nate who usually click the like button at the bottom of my posts.

If you ever have any thoughts or ideas about the blog, feel free to let me know in the comment section below. Comments have to be approved by me so you can actually send me a note that way. Just indicate not to publish it, and I won’t, but I can read what you have to say.

For those of you who have kept reading this far, let me close with this quote from St. Augustine. “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.” Happy traveling…

Credit: All the photos on this post are from Silvette Lee and show me during our major trips this year beginning with Death Valley and then through Belgium, France, Portugal and Spain. She’s a good travel companion and takes photos of things I don’t, including me.