Somehow it’s been 10 years since I first typed words for this blog. That means that writing this blog has officially become my longest running hobby ever 🙂 . It’s the longest I’ve done anything actually – longer than my working career (9 years), longer than college (4 years) and way longer than my previous NaNoWriMo winning streak (2 years) before I boycotted them.
This hobby of mine has been immensely rewarding in ways I never would have dreamed. It accidentally helped build a community of amazing people that I met through this very blog, which has turned into meeting people in real life around the world while in retirement. I’ve felt more connected to the world because of this blog.
I also accidentally added some more purpose to my life in early retirement by hearing countless times that my influence has helped someone improve their financial life, which is the highest compliment I can think of.
But enough gushing 🙂 . On this writing anniversary I thought it would be fun to reflect on the last year and what I’ve learned. If you’re curious, here are the previous posts I’ve written on this topic:
- Lessons Learned After 9 Years Of Blog Writing
- Lessons Learned After 8 Years Of Blog Writing
- Lessons Learned After 7 Years Of Blog Writing
- Lessons Learned After 6 Years Of Blog Writing
- Lessons Learned From 5 Years Of Blog Writing
So let’s get into some challenges I’ve had, my recent wins, and how my writing process is evolving going forward!
Challenges
These are the challenges I’m going to focus on conquering this year.
Reacting To “Hole Poking”
This is a new issue that I’ve been noticing more in the past year. I think I have a good handle on how to deal with trolls after writing on the internet for a decade and that’s not an issue at this point in my writing life. I also obviously don’t mind genuine questions – I’ve written over 550 articles on this blog so there’s a lot of info to sift through and I’m happy to point someone in that direction or just give a TL;DR to save them time.
But this year I discovered a different type of interaction that started to chip away at me a bit. I’m going to call it “trying to poke holes” 🙂 . Maybe it’s because of my mainstream media exposure or my Instagram growth this year, but I’ve had an influx of people trying to poke holes in my story, seemingly with the goal of exposing me as some kind of liar.
I don’t really understand the reasoning behind this kind of interaction since if something seems suspicious to me online, I just move onto something else. I don’t contact the person and try to poke holes in their story hoping to find some supposed slip up or hidden truth. There are billions of people on the internet who can provide motivation, so I don’t spend time on ones that make me raise an eyebrow, but maybe that’s just me.
However, with these interactions, I’ve been trying to focus on the flip side of this, which is that people aren’t blindly believing something they read on the internet, which is a good thing! The internet is full of things to be skeptical about. I guess I just didn’t really think I would be one of them, which might be a silly thought in retrospect.
I try to be totally transparent on this blog and one of the reasons was so that this type of interaction wouldn’t happen, but that hasn’t been the outcome unfortunately. And for some reason, this kind of interaction has started to weigh on me a bit. At times it made me contemplate not sharing as much on the internet anymore, but then I would look at all of the kind words people have sent me about how my transparency has had a positive effect on their lives and I quickly swing back in the other direction.
But I think that’s going to be my challenge in 2025 similar to how learning to not seek any external validation (even a solitary comment on a blog post 🙂 ) was my blog writing challenge for 2024. I’m going to come up with a plan so that this stuff doesn’t bother me just like I did with troll comments early in my blog writing life.
Typos
This is a smaller and more BTS issue, but it’s something I want to remember so like everything I write on this blog – I’m going to write it down for that purpose 🙂 . One of the reasons I had the courage to start this blog in the first place was by seeing that blog posts don’t need to be perfect from reading blogs I admire.
Typos are inevitable and I realized I didn’t have to be perfect to post something on the internet, but I’d still prefer to avoid typos if at all possible 🙂 . I noticed they were increasing on the blog recently because I would awaken each Tuesday morning to find a text from my Mom pointing out a few typos we missed. This would cause me to scramble out of bed to fix them, which is not the leisurely start to a day of retirement that I’m looking for, even if it only happens max 1 day a week 🙂 .
My Mom is my Editor and I’m extremely grateful to her for doing that for me every week and adding commas (since I hate them) and telling me when I’m rambling or repeating myself (so I can cut that part out). But this year somewhere in our process, I noticed an increase in typos that we weren’t catching so we changed our process a little.
Now my Mom only edits posts on larger screens instead of on her phone and I have started doing an additional pass on posts before they go live. Hilariously I do that on my phone because it looks different than when I write all these posts on my computer and I seem to catch things better that way. With both of these changes I think we’ve significantly reduced typos in the last few months, but I do know mistakes are inevitable so if you see something and want to let me know – feel free 🙂 . I appreciate it.
The Wins!
Now let’s shake off that negative stuff and celebrate some wins from the last year!
Tech Issues Crushed!
I hope 🙂 . I made a lot of changes on the backend of the blog in the last year, trying to fix some strange issues that people were having, such as page jumping, site crashing and even heating up the phone (yikes!)
Luckily a lot of people with the page jumping issue told me I had resolved it with one of my changes (if only I knew which one 😉 ), but a few issues persisted. I’d done everything I could think of and even got my WebDev Partner on the case and exhausted all of our ideas.
During all of this, I had been talking to my ad network (Monumetric) because the issue seemed to originate with their ads. They always claimed they couldn’t do anything about it…but I was suspicious about that.
Anyway, long story short, I’m on a new ad network now (Journey By Mediavine) that hasn’t reported any of the above issues so I hope they are all fixed now. If you see those issues after clearing your cache, please let me know with details about your device, browser and OS and I’ll look into it.
Crisis Of Confidence Solved!
Last year I talked about the small crisis of confidence I had after not hitting my arbitrary goal of getting at least 1 comment on each post and ‘failing’ at that goal two weeks in a row. I get about 100 spam comments a day on here and I realized that bot to human ratio was not helping me focus on all of your awesome reactions to my posts on here, but also on other platforms like Instagram.
So I focused on y’all and also meeting people who have reached out to grab coffee. Both of those things have helped a lot to make me realize that I’m not just writing into a void for robots and I think I can call this issue officially solved! I know y’all are out there (comments or not 🙂 ) and I’m still having a blast writing, so I’m going to keep doing it until it’s not fun anymore.
My Evolving Process
My writing process has changed a lot over the years. Here’s what I learned about it lately.
Always Writing
When I started writing on this blog, I was scared of a blank page. No word seemed ‘good enough’ to start a new post. A blank page is a pretty stereotypical writer fear, but after a few years, I realized something – I don’t ever start with a blank WordPress page anymore.
These days a new post page is never blank when I start writing it. There have only been maybe one or two posts out of the 550+ that I’ve written, that I’ve created from a blank page and completed in one sitting.
Most of my posts evolve over time. I get an idea that I jot down in Google Keep, and then a few weeks later, that idea grows so I jot down another note and then another. By the time I actually sit down to write any post, I have a multitude of notes to start with. I have no blank page worries 🙂 .
I think this ‘baby step’ approach has also been part of the reason that my posts are getting word-ier and word-ier. My average words per post has been increasing a lot in retirement as you can see below.
I think it’s because I work on a post a little at a time as my thoughts on it progress, until it’s basically complete in note form and then I “write” it all out. It’s a much easier and less intimidating process that allows me to follow my inspiration instead of only working on one post at a time.
Monitor Love
My Partner has a gaming PC that he gifted his family to use while we travel the world. When we visit them throughout the year, we get to see it again. I’ve been totally cool with the digital nomad life of doing everything on my laptop screen, but I realized that when I have the option, a monitor does make things a little easier when I’m editing complex posts, dealing with a lot of photo files for my flight reviews, or planning travel with a million tabs open for example.
However, I’m not sure what to do about this since I have yet to find an easy and portable solution for a monitor (we looked into iPads as second screens and mirroring on another laptop, but neither worked as well as we wanted).
I do also remember finding it easier to do my marketing job with a monitor as well – when I actually plugged it in 🙂 . When I started working from home in 2016, I quickly got used to writing and doing everything on a laptop and rarely used the work-provided monitor I had at home. I’m curious if I’ll get to that place with blogging. I haven’t longed for a monitor before now and I’m curious what solution I’ll come up with.
Let It Flow
I’ve gotten a lot better in the last decade about writing when I want to and accepting that sometimes I just don’t feel like it. When the writing inspiration flows, I let it sweep me away and follow it until it runs out. But when I don’t feel like it, I don’t force it.
That means that I don’t have anything resembling certain days or times that I write, but luckily since I’m retired I can just drop everything to write when inspiration hits and I think that’s a large reason why I still love writing on here. It’s never a chore because I only do it when I feel like the words are going to burst out of my fingers.
Conclusion
I honestly didn’t expect to still be writing this blog after a decade. I had no expectations, but looking around, it seemed that after retirement, most people leave their FIRE blogs behind since money is less interesting to talk about when you have enough of it.
But this blog has transformed into something I didn’t really expect – a curation of my retirement, a travel blog and a lovely community of people trying to improve their financial lives. I’m still having a blast and am excited to still be writing on here. I can’t believe it’s been a decade and am excited to see what the next one holds. Thank you for being here 🙂 .
Purple, I’ve been reading your blog for almost 5 years and this is my first comment. Thank you for sharing your story and for teaching me how to make my financial life better. I love that you “accidentally added some more purpose to my life” through this blog because you have definitely helped me add purpose to mine through financial literacy and through modeling your version of a happy retirement.
Thank you.
A real-life reader in Vermont
Oh wow – thank you so much for commenting and for your incredibly kind words – I really appreciate it 🙂 !
Congrats on the decade of consistency! I’ve read every post since discovering your blog in 2020, you’ve been a huge inspiration!
Thank you for being here Ken!
I’ve only commented a couple times but please know that you have inspired thousands of people, including me, to achieve financial freedom. Thank you for being so open and transparent despite the hole pokers.
Wow NK – thank you so much for telling me that. I’ll keep on going 🙂 !
Way to go! I’ve enjoyed reading a peak into your life. Whatever you did to fix the issues did work. I read this one straight through. I think it’s the pictures that cause problems sometimes. 🤷♀️
Thank you! And thank you for the feedback about the site – I’m so happy it seems to have worked! I haven’t heard of the pictures I insert causing problems before, but I’ll look into it 🙂 . Thank you again!
Hi Purple,
Thanks for the inspiring stories. I am sorry to say that the pictures do now cause troubles I haven’t experienced before. The pictures don’t load, I only see three dots bouncing. The words are there, though.
Hi Olga – thank you for letting me know. The 3 dots bouncing are ads loading. Can you see any pictures on my site at all? Feel free to send a screenshot of what you’re seeing to purple [at] apurpelife.com if that’s easier than describing it.
I always enjoy your blog and love to travel vicariously along with you. I’m constantly amazed that you’re able to travel so much on such a low cost! I do have one question though, is your hair still purple? 🙃
Thank you! My hair is not currently purple, but “Purple” is more of a mindset instead of a hair color for me 😉 . I wrote a whole post about that here in case that’s of interest: https://apurplelife.com/2019/02/19/what-does-a-purple-life-mean/
As for why I don’t currently have purple hair, I found it stressful to have dyed hair while traveling in Airbnbs where all their towels and pillowcases are white (which is basically all of them since it’s the current fashion). I found myself unnecessarily preoccupied with it because obviously I didn’t want to dye people’s nice things accidentally with my hair.
So I’ve had my natural brown hair for a few years now while traveling full-time. However, if I do get a homebase in the future, hair dyeing will be one of the first things that I’ll add back into my routine 😉 .
You have definitely inspired me! Your slow travel is something I aspire to!
Thank you so much Kim 🙂 .
Glad you are able to get past the trolls and enjoy blogging. I’ve liked your weekly posts for a while now.
Have you considered starting a You Tube channel? I know you have been a guest on podcasts and interviews but wasn’t sure if you were looking to expand your reach on other non-blog platforms.
Thank you Robert! I haven’t really considered YouTube because it’s basically like blogging with more work 🙂 – and unfortunately it’s not work I enjoy (recording, editing etc). But I try to never say never so we’ll see what the future brings. In general though I’m not looking to expand my reach and am happy with this lovely little section of the internet I’ve carved out 🙂 .
I look forward to reading your blog every week. You give me hope and motivation to keep on this journey. The truth is, I don’t have any friends to talk about finance. For that reason, this blog is important to me. I have learned so much. Thank you! It infuriates me that there are trolls here. Please ignore them. Block them if you can. We don’t need that energy here.
Thank you Sharon – that’s so nice to hear 🙂 . I’m sorry you don’t have friends you can talk to about finance and I hope you find them if that’s something you want. I personally found a lot of mine through the FIRE community – it’s a very welcoming place these days in general.
I’m so incredibly happy to hear that this blog is important to you and that it’s helped you learn though. That overshadows any trolls or troll-adjacent people I could encounter. I’m saving this comment to read on a rainy day so thank you 🙂 .
Thanks for sharing these! From a fellow blogger, it’s nice to know it’s not just me. “Hole-poking” has been demoralizing for me as well. It’s a nice perspective shift to see it as “people aren’t just believing everything they read on the internet” (though if they read more of your posts they’d answer their own doubts but 🤷♀️)
It’s been so awesome following your slow travel, super intentional, tailored-to-you life!!! I know I’m not sure I would have been brave enough to pull the trigger on early retirement without you doing it first!
Of course! I’m also glad to hear it’s not just me. And lol yeah, but reading is hard so we can’t expect that 😉 . And oh wow – that is the highest praise I could think of – thank you! I’m so happy me taking the plunge helped you as well 🙂 .
Congratulations! I look forward to your post every week.
Thank you so much Nancy! That’s wonderful to hear 🙂 .
Congratulations on 10 years! I’ve been reading for at least 5 years, and it’s crazy to think how much life has changed in that time period. So proud of you for sharing your journey, and hope you keep it up as long as it brings you joy. I wish we could poke those people back…
Thank you Sally! And being here for 5 years is wild 🙂 . I’m definitely going to keep it up – the positives far outweigh any negatives. And lol – no need for poking back. What’s that saying? “An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.”
I’m glad you are still writing (and enjoying it). I always save your posts to savour, even when they are not something that I can directly use / relate to ATM. I’m retired early (kinda planned but circumstances forced/allowed it to happen way earlier) though not as early as you and as I have 2 school age kids, my life is very different. I love reading about the places you visit and how you spend your days – you are inspiring
Thank you for being here Deb! I’m glad you enjoy my random assortment of posts 🙂 . And thank you for your kind words. I hope you’re well.
I for one am very glad you are still here! The first thing I do each Tuesday morning is look for your post.
My sister travels a lot and she uses a triple folding screen extender. It looks something like this:
Laptop Screen Extender Triple Monitor – 14″ Portable Monitor FHD 1080P Tri-Screen Attachment Extended for Laptop Extra Screen Compatible with Windows Mac Dex Chrome Travel Work Fits 13-17″ Laptops https://a.co/d/ao4O6JE
She can turn the screen on each side sideways or up and down depending on what she is working on. It’s super light and great quality.
As far as Doubting Thomases go, I am sure some have bad intentions just trying to get you off the internet – don’t let them! – but even for the well-intentioned ones it’s an impossible task. What takes them about 5 seconds to dash off might take you an hour of work to explain properly why they’re wrong. My advice would be to just treat them as trolls and ignore them. Keep your energies for the people like me who are eager to accept your gift of words.
Oh wow – thank you so much for telling me that Caro 🙂 . It means a lot. And thank you for that suggestion – I have looked at those before and they seemed unwieldy, but I’ll take another look with that recommendation – thank you!
Haha “Doubting Thomases” is a way better term than what I came up with 🙂 . And thank you for your suggestions – I’m hesitant to just write them off as trolls since I don’t want to lose perspective and fall down a slippery slope many people seem to fall down where they think anyone who disagrees with them is a troll.
So I’m trying to find a balance that allows me to answer genuine questions – even if it takes me an hour 😉 . I’ll figure it out, but I do very much appreciate your suggestions and definitely want to save as much of my energy as possible for lovely people like you.
Purple, I wanted to add to the chorus here! I am a perpetual lurker, but I just discovered your blog last year and I’ve been a devoted reader ever since. I’m a digital nomad aiming for FIRE, so I find your posts fascinating and full of invaluable information.
For monitors, let me be the second person to recommend triple monitor extenders. My husband and I use the Maxfree monitors (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0C68PBF3K?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title) all day every day for work, and we really like them. The screens are decent size/quality and they are extremely portable and compact.
Congrats on 10 years!
Hi – thank you for telling me that! I’m so glad my posts are helpful to you 🙂 . And wow the second recommendation for these type of monitors – I’ll definitely do a deeper research dive into them. Thank you!
Love the blog. Trolls always be trolling. Hope they stop living rent free in your brain.
Haha thank you so much Sheila 🙂 .
Purple, congrats on 10years! I’ve been reading your blog for years and while I was working I would read your blog religiously every Tuesday to keep my spirits up. Now that I have also fired I find I keep reading because of the feeling of kindred spirits. Currently commenting from Taipei on my own international adventure!
Thank you Morgan! And wow – that’s so cool to hear. Have a fantastic time in Taipei!!! I have yet to make it there and am jealous 😉 .
Hole-poking: such a good way to describe the phenomenon, and after a recent incident where I stupidly got baited by that exact tactic, I’m totally onboard with prioritising your peace and blocking/deleting the crap out of those comments and the people making them. Life is too short and important.
Proofing: it’s a well-known phenomenon that we get used to reading text in a certain way, and our brains will edit out, add in, or totally overlook mistakes. Changing the text, as you’ve discovered, helps a lot because your brain has to refresh the way it’s looking at it. I’ve found changing the font is also really helpful – it can be as simple as copy-pasting into Notepad and doing a read-through.
10 years of blogging is a big deal, well done! So many FIRE blogs have crumbled into the ether, and it’s so good to see you still going.
Oh I’m sorry you encountered that as well 🙁 . Fair enough on the approach though. I’m trying to find a balance so I don’t accidentally ignore genuine curiosity, but finding that line has been a bit of a challenge. I’ll keep working on it.
It’s good to know our approach has some backing 🙂 – I thought I just made it up lol. And ooh changing the font is brilliant – thank you!
And thank you so much – I’m happy to still be here and enjoying it 🙂 .
Congrats on the ten-year milestone!
I’m glad you’re still updating. Some FIRE blogs that I liked reading fizzled out after the authors quit their jobs. I guess chasing the goal of early retirement was more motivational to them than actually being retired!
To me, what comes after retirement is the interesting part. I want to design a great life for myself, and I always want to hear how other people have achieved that, so I can use their best ideas.
RE: “hole poking” – in the few times I’ve brought up FIRE with people in my life, I’ve encountered a surprising amount of hostility toward the concept. For whatever reason, some people want to believe that it’s impossible to retire early. They think all FIRE people are either lying about being retired or have secret generational wealth.
Maybe they’re jealous because they don’t think they could do it, so they convince themselves that no one else could either, to make themselves feel better. Maybe they’re too deep in the consumerist, spend-everything-you-make mindset to question it. Maybe it just doesn’t fit their mental model of how people are “supposed” to live, and they’re not used to questioning their own assumptions. I really don’t know.
Thank you!! And yeah I can totally see that – I just seem to have accidentally made my blog into something else that’s evolved with me in retirement so I still want to write even though the amount of finance content has fizzled out a bit 😉 .
And I’m with you – I was so curious about what happens after quitting and that’s one of the reasons I was determined to keep writing (no matter what I was writing about). I wanted to provide an example for someone like me who was looking for those before taking the plunge.
RE: “hole poking” – I’m so sorry to hear that. I don’t know if it’s because I surround myself with a weird group of people or what, but I’ve never received hostility in real life about the concept, just online. I can’t even begin to unpack that reaction, but your possible explanations make sense to me.
Anyway, I’m glad the internet has brought together people who aren’t hostile to the concept of freedom 🙂 .
Way to be consistent! I’ve learned that posting consistently is not one of my strengths, so you have my respect for that.
And congrats on ten years!
Thank you David! And haha fair enough 🙂 .
I realize I’ve been reading your blog for years and have never left a comment. I sincerely apologize for that because I LOVE your blog. I have saved several of your posts because of some interesting tidbit of information I wanted to refer back to later. Reading about all the cities you visit is thrilling for me. Some I have added to my wish list ONLY because of your reviews. My husband would also like to thank you for increasing my knowledge of and interest in birds. Overall, it is just so fun reading about your life (which is different than my own). Thanks for continuing to write and do your best to ignore the trolls or negative energy.
Hi Liz – thank you so much for commenting and for your kind words! And no worries at all – I’ve been a lurker on blogs myself for a lot of my life 😉 . I’m so happy to hear my travel posts might have helped and woohoo birds!! And I’ll do my best – thank you for being here 🙂 .
Hi Purple – I am planning to retire within the next few years and started following your blog toward the beginning of my fire journey. Our hobbies are similar and love reading about your every day adventures, can’t wait to join you on the travel and leisure train. leaving a comment per your comment 🙂
That’s amazing A!!! Congratulations on your retirement in the next few years – that’s so exciting!!! I’m glad you like reading about my random adventures.
Congrats on your 10 years! And thanks for the inspiration you share with us all.
Regarding monitors, I used to workon my laptop only and now I have two monitors, I can’t go back.. have you tried plugging your laptop to your Airbnb TV?
Thank you Claire! I haven’t tried that, but I did used to travel with an HDMI cord when I was playing Zelda so I’ll look into what kind of cord I would need for my laptop – thank you!
I’m not really one to keep up with blogs, but I always look forward to yours! I maintain an IG page to track my own progress, and trust me, I know this takes time and effort haha
Haha indeed it does – and that’s awesome! Thank you for being here 🙂 .