Now is the time to maybe leave the travel blog alone and build up our communities again

This post is mostly just for me to remember how I felt in the first days of social isolation. We’ve been on social distancing for a little over two weeks and I felt a little itch like in the old days of blogging when I first started with my twin momma group. This was before Marco Polo or Instagram groups or even group texts when we’d use blogs to connect with each other and talk about what to do with our babies at each stage of the new parenting game. We blogged for our own sanity and we read other people’s blogs to connect and to feel a little less alone in the world. I’ve heard a lot of talk in my blogging networks about what people are going to do with their travel blog these days. And for me, I’m not out there surfing for the 10 best things to do on my next trip or even the 10 best ways to survive coronavirus at home. I am stuck at home with my two 11 year olds all day while my husband still goes to work in a hospital. I’m looking for connection and a place to put my thoughts. And with all these thoughts in my head I can’t help but put them out here because it’s comforting to still do parts of the things we used to do before the world shut down.

Even just last month before coronavirus became a daily part of our lives I was feeling torn in my social media world. I love being able to write and connect people and I’m thankful that I work with many really amazing brands. Even more than my travel blog, my favorite platform is instagram because it’s photography-forward and easy to instantly connect with people everywhere even if you have only a few minutes to scroll. But on many of my recent campaigns, I have received messages from other bloggers and influencers who would not engage with my content or even the campaign they were asking about or even the brand I was working with and want my contacts. I would also get people who would engage with my social media until we would forge a bit of a friendship and then they would ask “to pick my brain” for tips to grow their social media too and then stop engaging on my content and go on to follow someone else. These things really hurt and I was trying to figure out how to balance this hurt with how I wanted to keep working in the brave new social media world. I loved doing what I was doing and the community I was a part of but it also felt like I was part of something inauthentic and I didn’t know what to do.

And then suddenly we all started to get shut in and the travel stopped and I started hearing more of the old conversations we used to have on social media pop up again. Real feelings. Real thoughts. And real people started surfacing again. It feels like the old feelings of social media community is back again and feeling how authentic social media feels right now and how this medium needs to be in the heart of a crisis, I feel true to what I would tell the people who used to reach out pre-coronavirus. Social media is all about actually being social and getting to know your audience and sharing yourself and the brands that you truly love. I don’t think the intent can ever be to make fame or money or “grow followers” without becoming inauthentic and out of touch. And I am even more adamant now through this current pandemic that this is the way social media needs to evolve.

The scariest part about how the virus broke out in North America is that we were treated like numbers or followers. We were part of a faceless group where the ratio of people who had the virus needed to be low in order for someone else’s profits to be big. If you need factual information to support this claim, I would be happy to send you media links but there are too many and this is not the point of my post. My point is that it really sucks to be counted as a faceless follower. It can even feel like you’re a bit exploited because you are being exploited. It’s like how we feel when following someone on Instagram and they shout out “thank you for making me reach 1000” instead of ever saying hello or getting to know you as anything besides their 1000th follower. People want to be part of a community and they want to feel like they matter. If I’m going to spend my time somewhere, my time is precious to me and I want to feel like I matter.

And we can see the idea of community building again through this crisis. In Seattle a hashtag emerged as we all started to isolate and the first few times I saw #wegotthisseattle I nearly started to cry. One of our fanciest, most-established restaurants Canlis, a restaurant where my grandparents were probably two of the very first customers is still innovating-instead of continuing their white-tablecloth model, they turned into 4 takeout restaurants to keeps their workers employed and help get the community meals. They pivoted. There is another restaurant Musang that is fighting food insecurity and creating community in Seattle too. There are so many stories of our local businesses rising to help their communities, I am supporting as many as I can by shopping online and ordering in takeout.

We have no school but I’m starting to get messages from the kids’ school friends parents who are organizing classes on Outschool. The kids’ teachers use Schoology for them to connect. And neighbors are asking neighbors if there is anything that anyone might need and updating toilet paper stock availability at community grocery stores through the Nextdoor app.

I know we are all losing business right now. And I know uncertainty is something that fuels fears. And this looks different in everyone’s individual homes. And with people being forced to stop travel the travel industry is really really hurting. But without putting lives in jeopardy there really isn’t a way to encourage travel right now except to pivot our mindset and build the communities that we’re actually living in. These are the people who used to click through our posts to dream about trips and these are the people we help to connect with trips that changed their lives. How do we help them get through one of the scariest events in history so far? How do we help them know that the best place to be in the world right now is in their home, and that they need to support the communities that make the fabric of their lives?

We do it ourselves.

We stay at home. We social distance. We order in takeout. We talk about adventures we are having RIGHT NOW. The adventures in our homes. The adventures getting normal stuff done while social distancing. The best ways to keep ourselves healthy. And we talk about the way we budget to make the current trip we are undertaking the BEST TRIP EVER. Because these are still the minutes we live and as travelers we know how to make the best of the worst trip situation. And for the first time in history, while we’re all stuck at home we have the ability to connect with everyone on this big round earth from where we are right now.

(PS. Now is also the time to start supporting how the travel industry is giving back. Four Seasons New York City, St Regis New York, Lotte New York Palace, and Yotel, Room Mate Grace New York, and the Wythe Hotel are all currently stepping up to help out patients and workers in New York City and this is a really beautiful thing to do in such a horrific time.)

Terumi

Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys.  She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live.  She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)