Blog, Blogger, Bloggest!

It is with mixed feelings that I start writing this post.

Looking back upon my blog history, which started on 14 November 2006 (in Dutch, how cute), I see a series of captured moments describing my adventures, my observations, my emotions and a whole lot of comments from friends and family on my stories throughout the years. I would never have dared to dream that almost six years later, my blog would still be alive and kicking and that so many friends around the world would still be reading it. I mean, surely I find my life interesting enough to create this diary for my own record, but who would have thought that so many others find it worthwhile to read about it and why?

Actually, I’m not even going to try to answer that one, because I may be bitterly disappointed when finding out that it’s only because they were very bored at work and already spent two hours on Facebook, booked the ticket to their next holiday destination and googled the names of all the one night stands they could remember.

But I do know this. I enjoy writing and sharing my thoughts with the rest of the world. The rest of the world being my limited network of friends and acquaintances of course. Let’s be honest, I’m just an amateur blogger and can scarcely claim that uncountable strangers are following my blog just because I write such fascinating stories. Be that as it may, I intend to keep on writing.

However, this particular blog you’re reading now is going to be my last one on yaisa.waarbenjij.nu.

Yes. I’m moving on to a slightly more sophisticated and professional platform. In the world of blogging (and I’m hardly an expert), there have been numerous developments thanks to all the tools available on internet, most of which I don’t understand at all. Simultaneously, my blogging aspirations have developed as well. I feel I’ve outgrown the “backpacker’s letter to the home front” kind of writing. Facebook is a better and faster way to let your beloved know that you’ve landed safely and have settled in the hostel recommended by Lonely Planet. Although travelling is and always will be an important part of my life, I have more to talk about than just that. My blog is not a simple travel diary anymore and moreover, I have more writing ambitions.

Therefore, even though I have grown sort of emotionally attached to my yaisa.waarbenjij.nu address, I have decided to cut the longstanding umbilical cord linking me to this Dutch blog site and subscribed to a more mature and global weblog hosting provider: WordPress.com.

Unable to completely disavow my humble blogging origins, I’ve named my new weblog: whereisyaisanow.com and that’s where you’ll find my stories from now on. This old weblog will remain accessible until the waarbenjij.nu team decides to remove my account. Of course I’ve taken precautionary measure, should they do so at some point in the future, I won’t lose the precious content as I have printed albums of all the blogs I have written so far and I must say they constitute an amazing compilation of memories, including your comments.

So to those who would like to keep following me around the world, go to whereisyaisanow.com, click on + Follow and leave your email address. New posts will also show on Facebook and Twitter, so you can pick it up from there if you prefer not to be spammed in your inbox.

To those who have been more annoyed than entertained by my blogs but have just been too lazy to unsubscribe, here is your day of deliverance! This is the last one, you shall never have to hear from me again, that is of course, if we are not connected on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn or some other social network J .

Now, if you are actually interested in what I have been up to since I left Ubud and arrived in El Gouna 5 weeks ago, leave your last comment on yaisa.waarbenjij.nu at the bottom of this page to help me create a worthy farewell to this blog (it will be printed, added to my blog album collection and cherished for ever), go to whereisyaisanow.com, sign up and you’ll hear from me soon again from this new platform…

In the meantime, thank you waarbenjij.nu, thank you friends, family, loyal readers, thank you all for making my blog, keeping it alive, feeding it and thereby feeding me with so much positive energy and giving me such a great podium to express myself, to document six years of life travels, through high’s and low’s, from banker to beach bum and from Antarctica to Taiwan.

I’m turning a digital leaf and starting a fresh page. Enter.