Open world awards 2018. momondo (the travel site) sent us an email and let us know that we are finalists in their competition Open World Awards 2018. This really means the world to us! We are so humble and happy and in all honesty… this was exactly what we needed right now!
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Influencers Open World Awards 2018 – momondo
We love our site and we love to create content and give you guys our favorite tips of places and things to see while traveling. Most of the time we sit down at our computers and the inspiration is there – writing all about the cool stuff we have experienced. But then there are those days. Those days when there is no inspiration. When we wonder if we will make it in the end. Make the website our livelihood and be able to just post on our site.
Today we make most of our money by freelancing for magazines. The website is still a hobby and a thing that we do because I love writing and Mini loves photography. Other bloggers might know how much time we put in each and every post we write – and that’s a lot!
Apparently, blogs are not for friends and family
In 2009, when the blog (website) first started it was mostly friends and family that were reading our content. But for some reason – the bigger we got the less of our friends would read it. In 2012 we were at our all-time high, being one of Swedens biggest travel bloggers. That’s when I decided that I wanted to dedicate my life to writing. Said and done – for the next three years I studied and got my BA in journalism.
The problem was that I was studying full time and working full time. All because I did not want to take student loans. I was driving 400 kilometers at least twice a week and when I was not in school or studying I was at work. And in between that I was also posting updates on the blog. Mini had not yet started to be interested in the blog so I was pretty much on my own with the site. And then suddenly after two years of keeping it up – it (my body and mind) suddenly just said STOP!
Abandoning the blog for my bachelor’s degree
I was sitting at a lecture. Suddenly I felt that my heart started beating really fast and my eyes started to water. I couldn’t breathe. I left the lecture, computer and all and just stormed out. For no reason, I started crying hysterically and it wouldn’t stop. I got into my car and drove home. The crying would not stop and I didn’t know what was happening to me. The next day I went to the doctor and I got the verdict. I had pushed myself to hard and was crashing. He said, “no work, no school now you need to get your health back”.
I said that I would not give up on my dream. That I didn’t want to take a break from school and that I only had one year left. But at the same time, I knew that I could not keep everything up so I had a tough decision to make. I chose to stop posting on the blog. To take a break from bringblingtoeverything.com (that was the name back then).
A good ending and a new start to our travel blog
So like most of you already know – I got my bachelors degree in journalism and multimedia. My dear friend and classmate Linnea and Johan were a huge part of helping me through this tough time. They helped me to pass all my classes. There were days when I wouldn’t get out of bed. Then they went to the lectures and brought me their notes. (By the way, Linnea’s mom is one of our dearest readers).
School was done and I was ready to get back to writing. By this time Mini had started to be interested in becoming a digital nomad so we decided to give the website a new shot. Since I had already been at the top and were down on the bottom again – we wanted a fresh start. We renamed the site to bringblingtotraveling.com instead. Instead of writing in Swedish we changed it to English, becoming international. The problem was that the name was just way too long and it was impossible to give someone our email.
Finallylost.com was born
The day we decided to sell everything we own and move into a motorhome was the day that finallylost.com was born. Yes, we know that it is suicide to keep changing names but we both felt that this was the right thing to do for us. And here are we now… striving to get back to the top and to share our experiences and our lifestyle with the world. So to be a finalist in the momondo open world awards means the world to us!
There will be a ceremony in Stockholm at the end of May. It will be a great opportunity to meet other bloggers. Since we write in English we often feel a bit outside of the Swedish “travelbloggersworld”. We have to make sure that we are there – even if I am currently writing this from Portugal!
Influencers Open World Awards 2018
Wow, that was a long rant about us being a finalist. But I also hope that the post can give some of you guys hope. Today I am off all of the medication. It was quite a long way back but I had the best support from Mini and we got through it together. The other day, we were talking about the “good old days” and I said that I was bummed that we had to start all over again when we had something great before. And then I checked my email and got a mail from a reader…
And today the notice of that we were finalists came in and it totally made our day – week and month for that matter! Thank you momondo for seeing something in our site!
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