Change is coming – The Future of Five Adventurers

For the past 12 months I have toyed with so many ideas on the blog, from thinking of quitting to launching a second blog with either a focus on Islamic travel or inspiring the next generation of girls to get into science. Maybe it’s with the New Year drawing closer which has made me reflective and reconsider our aims, so I have decided that there will be changes to my blog!

Why I started blogging

I started blogging for three main reasons:

1.  To capture our families adventures

Travel is a big part of our lives, whether it is planning to wanderlusting, it’s the very essence of our family life. The primary aim of the blog was to write about our adventures, to record the tales of adventure, fun and hundreds of memories that we would share with our children and could reflect back on when they were older.

2.  To inspire others, especially communities who are reluctant to travel outside of their comfort zones

I wanted to show families that travelling with children isn’t impossible and the only restrictions are those placed yourself.  It is hard, but so is having children at home. I wanted to bring different pockets of the world to the lives of people.   We wanted showcase the amazing world and inspire and encourage families to go out and try something new.

3.  Be a positive ambassador 

The media is full of lots of scaremongering stories, lots of misconceptions are being born daily about the communities and religions. One of my all-time favourite quotes is

So I decided to adopt it. I wanted to show a positive side of the Muslim community.. We are all humans; we eat, sleep, dream and get woefully tired and angry. Through our travel blog, we wanted to dispel misconceptions and show Muslims are just ordinary people.

Likewise we wanted to show the Muslim community not to fear and to go out and explore Mother Nature by showing how we dealt with food issues, family issues and how we felt as Muslim travellers abroad.

Why do things need to change

1.  Numbers

I started writing to escape from the constant feeling of not being good enough. I was feeling as though I was a terrible mother, wife and daughter, and writing was my way of escaping and being myself.  However, after a few months, I got caught in the numbers game, how many people are reading my blog posts, how many followers, my ranking, etc.. It all became too much too soon. Instead of it being something I enjoyed, it became more like a chore and quickly forgot why I started.

2.  Not fitting in

The blogging community is great in many ways but not so great in others. I stopped attending blogging conferences because I felt I didn’t fit in and the cliques are ever growing and becoming more the norm. I am a happy go lucky person who loves to talk to anyone and everyone. However, reading how badly newer bloggers were treated at Britmums made me sad but not very surprised.

3.  More Than Just Travel

Travel was always a big part of my life before my blog and will long continue even if my blog doesn’t. I feel that there are so many other aspects of our life that we love and would love to share to give others inspiration.  From my lovely husband and his crazy idea of raising children who adore science to my Bento lunches to homemade fancy dress costumes, we are so much more then travel,and I rarely  share these aspects as I felt it fell outside the ‘family travel blog’ banding

So what is the future for Five Adventurers?

I have decided to address all the issues above with change.   Life is too short to spend lots of it being sad and feeling insignificant. This doesn’t mean you should stop trying and give up at the first hurdle but you need to embrace things that make you happy and remove the negativity.  So…

Whilst travel is a huge passion of mine and will always feature very strongly on our blog and across our social media, it will now only be one aspect of what we write about.  There will be a section on travel focused primarily for the Muslim community, which will include guides, food ideas and lots of information about safety, and how it feels to travel as a Muslim family in other countries.

There will also be additional sections on crafts and things we create as a family to learning adventures showcasing science based activities you can do at home, to kitchen adventures where we share creative lunch/dinner creations to easy recipes you can do with your children.  I am passionate about sharing our adventures and inspiring families to have their own adventures at home, locally and globally.

I still love the saying, ‘be the change you want to see in the world’, for us this needs to be a change where you focus on the positives and move forward with those, whilst getting rid of the negativity.  The world is full of unhappy people, maybe it’s time we all focus on the things that make us happy!