To Blog or Not to Blog, That Is the Question

I started this website more than 16 years ago to chronicle a year off, which turned into a four-year journey, which culminated in a decade living in Bali. And, just in case anyone’s been dedicated enough to check, I’ve had it offline for more than a year now.

Why take a site offline? Well, to précis, I was heavily involved with the Tesla Takedown protest movement against Elon Musk, which, during the heady days of DOGE (remember them?), seemed as though it was going to tank Tesla’s share price. (Tesla sales in Europe remain dented, but, as befits a company run by a man whose distinguishing talent is stock pumping, its share price remains regrettably bulletproof and Musk is, at the time of writing, a paper trillionaire. Heyho.)

Anywise, as you’d expect of a woman doing anti-fascist stuff, I received a few unpleasant messages, so it seemed like a good idea to take this site down to avoid being doxxed or having edited lowlights pulled out for public distortion.

As to why I kept it offline, after the media and (I assume) the anonymous keyboard warriors had moved on to the next thing (Palestine Action, since you ask)?

Well, that’s a longer story. The first element is that, as you’d expect of what was initially a family travel blog, it had a lot of pictures of my spawn as a child. In my defence, 2010 was a very different place from 2026, when we’re much more aware of privacy and it’s normal to grey out the faces of a child’s peers on a sports day photo shared in a family WhatsApp group.

However, thanks to the magic of AI (from dark web tools to Musk’s very own Grok), in 2026 any random pervert can turn child pictures into CSAM (child sexual abuse material). Understandably, therefore, neither Zach nor I were enthusiastic about leaving them up, and it felt like a good deal of housekeeping to go through 16 years’ worth of imagery downloading and deleting every pic with a kid in.

Another element that gave me pause is this. I’m fairly confident that some of what I’ve written over the last 16 (almost 17) years won’t read well in today’s new and (for some) more enlightened era. Exoticism is now, correctly, a cardinal sin of travel writing, and I’m sure there’s absolutely loads of that. (Many people also aren’t fans of “parachute” writing, but I think a personal blog can be excused, particularly as I’m not presenting myself as an expert.)

More damningly, I’m fairly sure there are bits that go beyond exoticism to stereotyping and worse. There are likely some personal revelations that I ought not have committed to the internet. And there are also things that are just plain embarrassing, like a chirpy endorsement of a camp where you pet tigers (you’ll be stunned to learn that these things are built on abuse).

After some reflection, I’m not going to go back and delete or rewrite 16 years of posts through a decolonising lens, or even simply with the wisdom of age. That would be both dishonest and a massive waste of time. Let’s just say there are lots of things buried in the hinterlands of this blog that I wouldn’t write now and, if you stumble across one of them and it offends you, I apologise. (Also, if you find anything so offensive you feel it needs to be deleted or CW-d, drop me a comment and I’ll do something about it.)

My third concern was practical. The online landscape has changed beyond recognition. Writers are on Substack (or beehiiv if you don’t like Nazis); photographers and videographers are on Insta and TikTok; the world and its wife has a podcast. Further, Twitter is now a fascist cesspool; Facebook is a ghost town; influencers carry more clout than travel writers, let alone travel bloggers.

And, as the garnish to this particular shit sandwich, AI, plus the oncoming march of AI agents, is both transforming search and destroying the broader internet, making discovery increasingly more difficult even for bona fide newspapers with millions to burn. At its crudest, it’s hard to find readers for a blog nowadays—I’m not sure many people even read blogs any more—and it’s phenomenally difficult to make even pennies from a blog.

On the other hand… I’m travelling for a few weeks. After giving up flying and returning to the UK (large and related decisions that I intend to write about), I’m working my way through Spain to Morocco then back up to Ibiza for a Christmas cat-sit. I’d like to write about that, and not necessarily in a form that packages tidily as conventional media, so why not write about it here? Further, I have some general thots about the way the world is going, and I’d like a space to write about those, too.

So, while I reserve the right to start a Substack or a podcast, I’m also hoping to revive this blog. Consider this a shot in the dark.

Thanks to NoName_13 for the image, which you can find on Pixabay.