Budget Travel Intentions says goodbye

“All good things must come to an end.”

The words of a popular, well-known cliché are often used to deal with disappointment or change during a transition in our lives.  Most of the time, it’s used when a great experience in our life is no longer as good as it used to be so we use this euphemism to make ourselves or others feel better.

So it is with this blog – Budget Travel Intentions.  It is now coming to an end.

Today is the last day of Budget Travel Intentions.  The end of this travel blog doesn’t mean it’s the end of budget travel, family travel, or travel tips for me.  And quiet honestly, the cliché above just doesn’t apply in the way most people use the phrase.  Yes, this blog is coming to an end.  However, something better is on the way.

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I never dreamed of being a writer.  After all, did anyone ever dream that they would write an online blog about travel?  Growing up, the serious journalism students wanted to write for newspapers and magazines.  That’s all changed.  Even with the recent popularity of online information and media, this was never a dream.

A while back, I talked about the search for job satisfaction and how I never really knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.  Honestly, my dream was to play baseball.  I played all four years in high school and had a chance to play in college.  But I just wasn’t good enough.  I moved on to college, got my degree, and began working.

As a kid I traveled with my family but my first real airplane experience didn’t happen until I was 20 years old.  That was the trip to Estonia.  I talked about how that trip to Estonia changed me.  Years later, I traveled many times all over Europe and have seen most of the US.  I grew to love travel.  However, it was a struggle just to keep a journal on any of my trips.

Growing up, I didn’t like to write.  Like everyone else, I had to write papers for English and History classes.  I also had to write a thesis for college.  However, my degree was in accounting.  There just isn’t much writing that goes on.  Back in college, I did write the story about The Crush.  However, less than 5 people had read that story until I finally shared it – 13 years after I wrote it.

Finally in 2009, I was looking online for different job opportunities and got the chance to write about budget travel here in Sacramento – a topic I know very well.  Since I am really good with money, quite frugal, and love to plan and save money on trips, it seemed like a great idea.  I never knew how much I would love it.

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Since that first budget travel article in 2009 on Fall getaways in northern California, I slowly began to write and build up a number of articles on travel tips and deals as well as tips and stories from my own travels.  For me, it was always a professional type of writing in which I shared information and tried to be as objective as I could.

Many months later in April 2010, I started Budget Travel Intentions as a more personal approach to my travel writing.  It sat on the back-burner for a while until I finally started producing more content for it in August.  In total, I’ve written over 400 posts on travel in less than a year and a half.  It’s been busy, fun, challenging, discouraging, and rewarding.

As I continued to write, one of the best things to come out of this has been the travel community on Twitter, Facebook, and various travel forums.  My passion to write began to grow and new ideas were forming.  It’s impossible to share all the things I have learned or how fulfilling this has been.  Yet I am only getting started.

I’ve done all of this working a full-time job while being a husband and a father to two young kids.  If that’s not enough, I’ve been a part of various volunteer stuff that takes up quite a few hours a month.  In all of that, I’ve lost a lot of sleep, doubled the hours I’ve worked (work and blog combined), and did it all for very little pay – enough for a nice dinner with the family once or twice a month.  And you know what?  I’ve never enjoyed anything more in my life.  Travel writing/blogging is my passion (despite the occasional burnout).

So what have I done lately to celebrate this passion?  I haven’t written for my Sacramento Budget Travel page in over a month and now Budget Travel Intentions is saying goodbye.

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For the last two months, I’ve been working on a brand new blog that will launch on Monday.  I’ve spent many hours working on this, never realizing how difficult it would be.  I’ve had weeks where I would only get 3 to 4 hours sleep a night only to work a full day and not get home until late.  Many nights I fell asleep on the couch from exhaustion after the kids went to bed.  I would wake up, get on the computer, work on the new blog some more until 3 or 4 in the morning, and wake up 3 or 4 hours later to do it all over again.

However, I am excited.  My passion has grown.  I have ideas I am excited about.  I will bring new features to the travel blog.  The new site will be a combination of Budget Travel Intentions and my Sacramento Budget Travel Examiner page as well as the new material and ideas.  I may be a small fish in a big pond of amazing travel bloggers and writers but I think I can find my niche as well.

No, I am not traveling around the world or even taking long vacations to 6 countries at a time any more.  However, this new blog will offer something to travelers.  It will still provide the tips, deals, guest posts, and destination information.  However, the new blog will use travel to challenge people on how they live their lives.  It will help people struggling with finances or seeking some help in the area of money – for travel and every day life.  And it will inspire, challenge, and motivate people to not only travel but be better human beings.

Budget Travel Intentions is saying goodbye…but it’s really a good thing.

Saying goodbye (Flickr: gyros)