Newsletter #6
My trip to Switzerland and some blog design updates
If you're following me on Bluesky or Instagram, you’ll probably have noticed that I took a trip to Switzerland this month!
My partner had a work trip which I tagged along on, so I did a bunch of little solo hikes alongside some sightseeing as well.
Normally I try to aim for one new blog post a week, but I also didn't want to spend all of June blogging about Switzerland, so I got out all five hike write-ups for Grosser Mythen, Rigi, Mont Saleve, Rochers de Naye and La Palette this month.
It helped that I got really bad jet lag after I came back home, and waking up at 3am gave me a lot of quiet time to focus on writing the posts.
Switzerland was a lot of fun, and I'm definitely keen to do more international hikes in the future. Did you know that Mount Olympus (where the Gods live in Greek myths) is a real mountain? Maybe this is me showing my ignorance but I did not know that, but now that makes me want to take a trip to Greece. 😂
I did also write three other posts in the first half of the month:
That’s 8 posts in total this month!
Some blog design updates
So in between all the hiking, I did do a little bit of fiddling around with my home page and added some new preview images to each post.
I also added a breadcrumb component that's sticky to the top of the page. I feel like my blog can be a little confusing since it has so many sections, so I'm hoping this makes it a bit more clear which section each post is in.
Adding a new photos section
I also added a new photos section to my blog.
So my newsletter hasn't really had much of a gain in subscribers this year (if you’re reading this, I appreciate you). But surprisingly my Instagram is slowly getting a trickle of new followers. Maybe people who read my hiking content are more likely to have an Instagram account than want to subscribe to something more traditional like a newsletter?
But anyway, since I also recently bought a camera, I figured I might take my Instagram account a little bit more seriously (i.e. post once a week instead of once every few months like I was before). But I also didn't want the photos to live just in Instagram, since I'm not sure I will be using Instagram forever. So I’m planning on keeping them on my blog as well.
May in numbers
🏋️♀️ 6 visits to the gym
🏃♀️ Ran 16 km and hiked 43km
🇯🇵 Wanikani Level 41 → 43
🇨🇳 Pimsleur Mandarin Lessons 62 → 65
🇨🇳 HanziHero Level 2 → 2
📚 Read 6 books
📝 Published 8 blog posts
If you'll remember my last newsletter, I was in a bit of a funk after getting off-track on my goals, and wasn't quite sure what to do. I did get one piece of advice from Adam that rather than focusing in on the off-track bit, to instead take a step back and think about how you are feeling emotionally instead. If you focus on getting in a good state of mind mood-wise, the rest should more easily fall into place.
My goals haven't quite fallen into place - but I also knew this would happen considering I went on a holiday. I had plenty of time to read, though! Nonetheless I'm in a pretty good mood, maybe thanks to the post-holiday vibes so to be honest, I'm totally fine with being partially off-track.
Sadly (hilariously?) too, my subscriber count actually dropped a bit after I published my last newsletter. Sorry to be a downer, y'all.
See you next month!