Hi everybody! Year Disrupted here.
If you’ve been following us since A1, you know that we’ve remained traveling and active on Instagram, but we haven’t been too great about keeping up the blog and podcast.
Why? A few reason:
We Got Busy
While nobody likes skipping out on their commitments and projects, our decision was a blessing in disguise. Simply put, because all of the things we were trying to create happened!
If you remember, we began Year Disrupted as an exciting but giant question mark. Gabrielle was new to the self-employed world and Abhi had LITERALLY just quit his job. We had big goals and wanted to document every step along the way. Yet one of the best parts of our journey is that it worked!
Our businesses boomed, we found our flow and discipline, and we eventually partnered together to create a website business, an extension of Gabrielle’s company. In just a short amount of time, we were building several websites per month and it all grew out of our experience with Year Disrupted.
So we had to pick and choose. We love talking about our travels and creating content BUT we do it as a side passion. When new and exciting projects roll in that not only pay the bills but carry so much potential to grow, we kind of have to hop on those.
But regardless, things have calmed down a bit for us. Either that or we found our flow. And we’re finally ready to get back into it!
COVID happened
While we were extremely fortunate to be at the right place at the right time during COVID, we knew many people were far less fortunate. Last Spring/Summer, most of the topics dominating the news were about Black Lives Matter and COVID. We just didn’t feel completely right flooding your news feeds with travel inspiration and fun posts when there were very real topics on the table that needed to be discussed.
So we toned it down. We hung back. We, like many, turned inward and worked on ourselves, making the space for more important topics. Plus, we realized it may be *gulp* quite a while before people started traveling. Plus, we didn’t know how to inspire people to travel when many didn’t know when they would even be able to leave our house again.
Bali happened
This title sounds a lot worse than it is. But many of you know we spent 5 months in Bali. What many of you don’t know is that it was pretty up and down. We had great times and not so great times.
But one of the things I think we struggled with the most is the fact that after stepping into Bali, it seemed like literally everyone did what we were trying to do. Blogging, content creation, Instagram, remote work, etc. This lifestyle was so new to us and we loved sharing our explorations. However, it felt a bit strange when we arrived in Bali, the mecca of digital nomads, only to find that what we were doing was already “tired” at that point.
Plus, we got a bit turned off by the hyper-Instagram culture and trying to monetize everything mindset we found there. We missed sharing stories just to share them. We missed sharing out podcast because we enjoyed it, not because we were trying to trend hop.
It’s hard to fully explain and we’re definitely not trying to knock Bali. I just think it contributed to us taking a step back from our platform.
Overall, there are only so many hours in the day and we decided to focus on what was helping us grow professionally as well as taking Instagram photo shoots because, well, that sh*t is fun!
Either way, we’re back! At least kind of. We can’t wait to talk through our experience in Bali and everything we’ve been up to, both mentally and physically, since we last talked.
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