Life In Limbo

Q&A: How to Blog While Backpacking

June 16, 2014

How easy has it been for you to blog so far [while you’ve been travelling], especially with just an iPad Mini? If you don’t mind me asking, which app are you using to help you blog? -Jan

I got this question in a comment and answered it already, but I thought it was definitely worth expanding on in a full post.

While I was away on my trip, I used blogging as a way to keep my family and friends back home updated with what I was up to. Since I wasn’t sending out lengthy emails and was constantly on the move, blogging felt like an efficient way to keep everyone in the loop. Also, since I’ve been writing about my life online for almost ten years (before this blog I was on WordPress, and before that Livejournal, ha!) it feels more unnatural not to blog at this point. Whenever I go too long without using words and photos to express myself, I start to feel lost and out-of-sorts. Which brings me to my first piece of advice:

Choose a way of documenting your trip that works for you.

Blogging on the road can be kind of challenging at times. Since I’ve been blogging for so long, I know how to fix typos from my phone, and how to easily edit the back-end html of my posts if something doesn’t look right. I’ve had lots of practice with typing out blog posts and hitting publish, so in general it doesn’t take me very long to write new content. But if it’s brand new for you as you start your trip, you might get frustrated along the way and give up if it starts to suck up too much of your time. After all, you’re on a trip to experience brand new parts of the world, not to sit around in internet cafes hitting your head against the proverbial wall because your latest post just went up in a puff of smoke.

But I think documenting is so important! Preserving memories is such a great way to process and appreciate them, and of course to have them for later. So that’s why I would definitely recommend looking at different types of documentation if blogging isn’t your thing. In the past, I’ve kept a scrapbook on trips, similar to Austin Kleon’s tour notebook. When a friend of mine went on an exchange to France, she wrote weekly emails to her family and friends that were full of anecdotes and photos. A lot of people I met on my travels were keeping a photo blog on Tumblr, and others are just consistent about uploading photos to Facebook or Instagram with detailed captions. Whatever you choose, make sure it’s a method you’re comfortable with that’s easy for you to keep updated, and remember to:

Keep it simple!

When I was blogging on my trip, the whole process consisted of uploading photos to my Flickr account, pulling them into a blog post, and adding a few paragraphs worth of memories and favourite places I’d visited. I didn’t include any links, I rarely wrote captions for the photos, and sometimes I wrote very little. But the pictures spoke for themselves and I was happy to just get everything written down and shared with my loved ones back home. Almost one year later almost 100% of the names of all the restaurants and areas I loved in each city have disappeared entirely from my mind, but I would have been devastated to lose them forever. My sister spent this past semester gallivating around Europe and she was able to visit several of my favourite places because I got them written down in this simple form.

It reminds me a lot of one of my favourite sentiments: “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” meaning done is better than perfect.

Pick good tools.

For the record, blogging from my iPad mini was totally fine. Definitely at times I missed having a full keyboard and some other features I like to use on my computer, but since I kept my posts so simple it wasn’t usually a problem. I realize that an iPad isn’t a traditional thing to bring backpacking and that it’s definitely a specialty item. Mine was a graduation gift from my father and I wouldn’t have been able to afford it on my own otherwise. But regardless of what technology (if any) you bring, you can still blog.

If you’re using a tablet, I would recommend buying an SD card reader for your device. This lets you totally sidestep the need to put photos from your camera onto a computer and saves you a ton of time. My card reader sometimes had a few issues but most of the time got the job done and couldn’t have been simpler to use. I have this iPad-specific one, but I’m sure there are similar products for other tablets.

I absolutely adore the Blogsy app. This one is specific for iPad, but I have also had great experiences with the WordPress app which is available on many different platforms for both phones and tablets. My favourite feature of Blogsy is that you can pull in photos from other social media platforms like Flickr and Instagram. Since I don’t have a mouse for my tablet, this drag-and-drop feature made my life a lot easier.

Before I received my iPad as a gift, I was planning to blog using only my phone and computers at hostels or internet cafes. If you choose this option, just make sure you bring a USB stick to keep your photos on and either a USB SD card reader to attach to the computer or your camera’s USB cord in order to upload your photos. I think this is definitely a good option as long as you test your tools before you leave and remember to keep it simple!

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I hope that helps! I absolutely love reading and looking at accounts of people’s travels, and I always say the more blogs the better. Memory keeping can be so valuable, so long as it doesn’t interfere too much with making the memories themselves.

If you have any more questions on this or any other topic, let me know in the comments or by email: stephanie @ lifeinlimbo.org. And if you have had success blogging while travelling, I’d love to hear your method! Add your thoughts to the conversation in the comments below.

Inspiration | June 13

June 13, 2014

I bought these summery shorts in black this week and I love them.

This colourful garden wall is so rad.

So what if I already have 5 striped shirts? This tutorial makes me want to knit another, stat.

I loved these thoughts from Elizabeth Gilbert about honing one’s craft: “I’m not trying to ignite a revolution every time I sit down at my desk; I just want to pursue excellence.”

Last week was a bit rough in terms of some of my relationships, and this article offered some solid advice on what to do when people disappoint you.

Earlier this week when I was feeling rocky, I did this online tarot card reading and this quiz, What Emotion Are You Guided By? Both felt spot on – the tarot reading very accurately reflected my topsy-turvy mood, and it turns out I am guided by Hope. That was a nice reminder midway through a crazy week.

I would love to get my hands on one of these portobello bahn mi’s, some of this coconut and pistachio vegan ice cream and a few beer-battered onion rings.

An Instagram account I’ve been loving lately: pretty and healthy food photos from @mille1000x.

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I was understandably less inspired this week since I was more upset and panicked. I have great news, though: I had a job interview today and was offered the position! The job would let me stay in my neighbourhood, is open to a contract only until the end of when I’d originally planned to stay in Korea, for the same salary and similar hours. The only big downside is that they offer fewer vacation days than most schools, meaning I might not be able to take some of the bigger trips I’d planned to take with my friends. However, considering that I’m planning to travel after my time here in Korea, I’m trying to remember that the vacation days are not as big of a consideration as the location and the salary. Those two factors will make up most of my quality of life here in Korea and they’re both exactly what I’d hoped. Nothing is signed yet but I’ve accepted, and touch wood it all works out. As my mom wrote to me this morning: “It all works out in the end. If it hasn’t worked out, it’s not the end.”

And so with that, the week of uncertainty and stress has wrapped itself up. It was scary and unsettling, but it seems to have worked out, just like everyone told me it would. Barring anything going wrong, that is – I don’t want to witch it! Overall, perfect timing for me to enjoy my weekend away in Seoul with my friends, dancing all night to M.I.A. and sightseeing all day. Cheers!

Chocolate Chia Pudding

June 12, 2014

“I love that after a day when nothing is sure, and when I say “nothing”, I mean nothing, you can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get thick. It’s such a comfort.” – Julie & Julia

Just replace “day” with “week”, “egg yolks” with “chia seeds”, “sugar” with “maple syrup” and add a “soy” to “milk” and voila: you have a quote that represents exactly how I feel right now. Walking home on Monday after getting the news about my school, I actually heard this quote in my head and was struck with the urge to watch the movie for the hundredth time.

And this morning, after I woke up feeling kind of small and defeated and not at all abundant, I made this pudding. I let it set up in the fridge while I went to the park – intending to do yoga but, after realizing that the platforms I usually use for my practice had been taken over by dozens of small Korean children playing, I just sat on a bench thinking instead – and tried it when I got home.

The taste is amazing, just like chocolate pudding but actually healthy, so no guilt required. The texture however needs a little work, my first few bites were too slimy for my liking. Blending in some steel cut oats really helped to give it a more palatable texture, but it could have still been smoother. It probably doesn’t help that my blender isn’t very high-powered so the seeds weren’t broken down much.

Of course, none of that is stopping me from spooning it into my mouth non-stop as I write this. It really is tasty.

Chocolate Chia Pudding

Adapted from Oh She Glows

Ingredients:

1/4 cup chia seeds
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 cup soy or nut milk
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
4 tbsp steel cut oats
pinch of salt

Blend all your ingredients together until smooth. Let the pudding set in the fridge for about an hour or until it’s the consistency you like. Having a high-powered blender will help make this pudding smoother so that you don’t taste the chia seeds.

And with that, I’m off to (probably) watch Julie and Julia clips until it’s time for me to go to work. If I’m not doing that, you’ll find me at the Korean diner, eating kimchi fried rice and trying my hardest not to worry/cry.

Happy Thursday, friends!

Photo Walk: Pattern

June 11, 2014

Looking back on the post, it feels like forever ago that I did my first pattern photo walk. But while I was walking around with my eyes peeled for patterns, the process felt very familiar, like I’d done it only last week – in fact, I often notice beautiful patterns on my walks, whether or not I photograph them. There’s something very soothing about having a small, easy task to mindlessly complete. It gives my hands something to do while I listen to a podcast and try and get out of my head for a few minutes. And after the news I got on Monday, my walk today was especially helpful.

Whenever I do photo walks or photo projects (like Steph Loves Today or Project 365, for example) I tend to be hard on myself and get discouraged about each individual photo. It’s only when I see the photos all grouped together that I can fully appreciate them and am reminded that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This is a good reminder for life too, I think: individual days might feel underwhelming or stagnant, but when you look at them strung together, it’s easier to see the beauty of all the ordinary moments. Or the days might feel overwhelming and the problems they hold insurmountable, but a few months later they’ll blur together and make more sense. I’m trying to remember that this week.

These photos were taken on an hour-long walk from my apartment to Haeundae beach and back, at around 11AM on a cloudy day. I used my 35mm f1.8 lens and shot in manual mode.