The decision to stop blogging has been a tough one but one that I’ve thought over carefully. While I’ve enjoyed sharing my travels with my audience over the past 22 months, it’s really changed how I travel and the amount of time I have free to focus on other things like my family, my day job, and my health.

When you blog while you travel, the focus becomes less on enjoying the moment, and more on taking notes of what you are doing and making sure you capture the “perfect image”. And while that would be okay if it were my full time job and career choice, blogging has mostly been a hobby for me and my travels are the moments when I get a break from my normal busy life and can decompress.

I still plan to travel as much as always, but now won’t be putting pressure on myself to capture it in a certain way so I can blog about it later. Blogging is time consuming – editing photos, writing posts, scheduling and maintaining social media, keeping your website up to date, contacting companies, etc can take several hours each week.

That being said, blogging has been an amazing adventure for me. I started my blog a week after moving my entire life “across the pond” to London to recount my mishaps and experiences of a new move abroad. Then, I used it to capture the trips I was taking around Europe. With the encouragement of a friend, I started posted travel tips, guides, and my stories for a wider audience. After a move to my boyfriend’s town of Cheltenham, I became part of the Cotswolds Bloggers, an incredibly supportive group that helped me learn how to work with companies and grow. Since then – and even since I’ve moved back stateside – I’ve worked with several brands and have had a wonderful experience getting to know business owners and support them. The irony of ending my blog in December is that this has been my month with the highest views ever. I always like to go out on a high note.

And, just to avoid any further confusion, I have one blog post remaining after this that is a partnering with a company in Belize in January, but that will be my last and true final post.

You are welcome to continue following me on Instagram (I’ve set it private now but you can find me as ‘nbrah26’). I have deleted the Noelle Across The Pond Twitter and Facebook pages.

What’s next for me?

Part of my overall personal goals in the past year or so has been to lower the amount of things I take on. As someone whose previous attitude was that I could take on anything and everything thrown my way, I just don’t feel that way anymore. Downtime is critical to my mental happiness, and having the ability to spend my free time reading, watching TV, doing errands, or with family and friends is essential.

I also now have no excuse to not go to the gym. Darn! 😉

Thank you all so much for your support of me.