Nine years have passed since I started my first blog. Five years since I went on my first trip abroad, four years since my first solo backpacking trip, and two years since my first long-ish backpacking trip abroad.

I get a kick at the pit of my stomach when I reminisce about my life in all those years… how I was before, my experiences along the path I chose, people I’ve met, and how I am now. It’s a feeling I can’t quite explain. It just is.

Once in a while, I stumble upon my old posts and I smile when I think about how much I’ve grown (or otherwise). I often try to guess what my “past self” would think if he met my “present self” … sometimes, I don’t have to because it’s clearly and sincerely written on my physical journal or on my blog.

It feels nice to read these kinds of posts because I’ve always wanted this blog to be like a message to my future self.

Getting my Life Back on Track

Like me, Ambot-ah.com has grown and changed over the years. From a blog about my philosophical take on things it has grown to focus more on my lifestyle and travels.

Recently, I haven’t been posting for months on end. Half of the reason why was because I’ve been living my dream of a semi-nomadic lifestyle and the other is because of personal blocks.

My reasons for blogging here has shifted from just writing for myself to pleasing the wide audience it has attracted. I get conflicted about who to write for and what to write about even before I type-in my first sentence in a blog post.

This delay is keeping me from blogging about my ideas/travels and has resulted in years of backlogs. What’s worse is keeping all that information in my head until I get inspired enough to write about it.

Inspiration rarely comes to me these days because my head is too cluttered.

I finally realized that it’s too much for me to handle. I don’t wan’t to keep that much of my past actively on my mind. I want to archive it all down and move on.

Transitions

This past year, I’ve been busy working on creating better workflows and implementing my ideas on how to blog better.

Disable Comments

The first thing that I want to do is to disable commenting on blog posts here at Ambot-ah.  This move will hopefully keep me from filtering my thoughts and ideas.

Leo Babauta did it for Zenhabits.net and I now fully understand why.

If you want to react or reach out on something I posted here, you can always find me on Facebook or Twitter.

Do-it-yourself Travels

I still love sharing my DIY travel tips but disabling comments would not be good for people who have travel-related questions. As a solution, I created a separate blog dedicated to travel guides and itineraries.

You can check it out at DiyDetour.com.

Detourista

I also started to post my travel features elsewhere, at Detourista.com, which I plan on developing as a curated travel content network.

Pueblo Framework

All these new websites take a lot of effort to create/maintain, which I why I started to develop a personal project that will make it easier for me to publish travel content and present them in a better format.

This framework/workflow/extension I codenamed “Pueblo” is basically a WordPress plug-in that extends WordPress core features and is powered by the Genesis Framework.

I’ll post all the geekery in another time.

Marcos Detourist

Lastly, as a way of keeping my personal life separate and to streamline my online activities I started to brand my online persona as “Marcos Detourist.”

I’ll be developing a new portfolio website at MarcosDetourist.com so I can have a place to pour my nine years worth of experience and expertise on Blogging, SEO, Content Marketing, and Photography.

What’s going to happen to Ambot-ah.com?

These new ventures had a few of my friends ask me this question. The anwser: I will still continue to blog here.

I’m not giving up on Ambot-ah. I’m taking it back! :)

Expect future posts that are more personal in nature and revolve around topics that are not solely focused on travel itineraries.