Things Are Changing Around Here.
On letting go in order to become.
September 23, 2022
Happy Friday, travelers!
This week, as I read Lore Ferguson Wilbert’s writing on her Substack, Sayable, I came across a post from a while ago where she talks about how much she’s given in free labor to that space. Before Sayable was on Substack with a paywall in front of some posts, it was self-hosted in the same way Sarah L. Travels is currently.
When she said this, I felt it in my bones:
I think of her as a friend and her readers as company for the journey. But I also need her to be a benefactor in some form, a patron of the work I invest in her. I need her to provide for me as I have tried to provide for her.
Emphasis mine. The “her” in question is Sayable.
Last weekend, I drafted a blog post in Sarah L. Travels about SEO. The idea was an SEO guide for writers that, like me, hate SEO.
If you’re wondering, “Sarah, what’s SEO?” the answer is a means of getting search traffic to a website by researching and including keywords in blog posts. There’s more to it than that, but this is a start.
Practically, it is the difference between this sentence:
“To be vegan in Oaxaca is to be invited into a culinary tradition unparalleled by its connection to the land.”
And this sentence:
“This list of Oaxaca vegan restaurants serves amazing Mexican vegan food.”
The first is for a reader that wants to know more about the food they’re eating. The second serves people that just want the restaurant list and to move on with their lives.
SEO is also the reason many search results have very similar content.1
My strategy was to merge the two, but that still isn’t quite right. Something always seemed “off” about it, like I was trying to fit a mold made for someone else.
As I wrote my advice in the blog post, I realized I needed to add this point or that topic to the mix. I typed furiously, as if there weren’t enough time to get down everything I actually do for SEO.
Before long, this post was over 2,000 words. As I read the steps I take before even writing a travel guide, I realized that, by the time I’m ready to write, I’m already too tired to give it my best.
And that was the moment I realized I am doing Way. Too. Much.
For free. For an algorithm that doesn’t attract readers, but searchers. They land on the site. They skim a post that took 10 hours to craft in its entirety. They find that answer. They leave after exactly 39 seconds. The end.
In my catharsis as I ranted about SEO, I realized the crux of the issue for me:
It's the kind of writing that people don't even read.
No one is specifically at fault for that—I don’t blame travel bloggers that have been successful in search, nor do I blame Google for doing its job: making profit.
I just am finally being honest here. This kind of writing is unnatural to me personally, and I am killing my creative insides by forcing it.
If I’m going to keep writing until I step foot into Country #197, something has to change in me. I need to spend time on the right things, so that I don’t neglect what matters (which is writing to all of you each week, here, in this space). For creative writers, the competition for web traffic is a race to the bottom.
And I’m opting out.
Because as I wrote guide after guide, I forgot to tell the story. And the one takeaway, the one gift SEO has given me, is this piece of knowledge:
People come for the keywords. But they stay for the story.
Last night, I saw an Instagram post with this quote by Richard Rohr:
“When you get your ‘Who am I?’, question right, all of your ‘What should I do?’, questions tend to take care of themselves.”
and
“We may spend our whole life climbing the ladder of success, only to find when we get to the top that our ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.”
The first one got me, but the second one really got me.
Travel blogging, in its current industry format, is the wrong wall for me.
The story of this journey is the right wall. So I will be spending more time here.
My goal in sharing all of this with you is to say to writers:
You’re not imagining it. It is practically impossible to simultaneously write well and write to someone with no intentions of reading. And it may be in the best interest of your career to pivot.2
To readers:
You keep me going. And I want to spend more of my energy on you than I have since I launched Sarah L. Travels in 2019. Instead of spending so much time on aggressive growth tactics, I want to talk to the people that are already here.3
As I’ve gotten to learn more about you through emails, comments, DMs, etc., I realize how fortunate I am to have even five minutes of your time. All of you are doing amazing, interesting things and are here because of the story.
It’s high time I started telling it first, and then linking the practical things as an afterthought. For too long, it was the reverse.
So if you’ve read this behind-the-scenes today and saw a piece of your own life in my words, I will ask you:
Is it part of who you want to be, not in its idealized format that only lives in your mind and is unlikely to live in the real world, but in its realistic prospects? Do you need to leave it behind? Transform it? Spend less time on it? Quit talking to the wrong people?
If you need to ideate, I am here. I get it. Changes like these hurt, maybe even make us resentful at our past selves, at industries that need creative people to survive but forget that far too often.
In travel, in career, in family, in life, in what is left behind for generations that come after us, the question is this:
What is the story you’re telling?
What’s On My Tray Table
I’m still reading Groundskeeping, which I gave a quick synopsis of last week. I am loving its discussion of class and reading from the POV of a male narrator. I’m still not finished with it, so I’ll save my review for next week.
Instead, I will ask: what are you reading?
Also, this part of the newsletter may become its own column. Books deserve their own space. If you have an opinion on that idea, I’d love to hear it. If not, no worries.
I hope your week is full of discovery. If you face existential crises like the one I wrote about today, I hope the way through is nourishing.
Be brave and stay that way,
Sarah
I hate the word “content.” Lol.
I hope you read this in Ross’ voice. IYKYK.
The same is true for my social media. I used to put so much pressure on myself to get 10K on Instagram. Now, I just want to talk to the people that are already there.
I'm currently reading Fadeaway by E.B. Vickers (good), Macbeth by Jo Nesbø (not loving it), A Curious Faith by Lore Ferguson Wilbert (very good) and The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall (also very good.)