Hey everyone! This post has been a long time coming, but it's finally here, and while I'm a little nervous, this is also me getting a lot of stuff off my back. 

It's not hard to see that I've fallen off the tracks with this blog. I meant to blog extensively over the summer but being at a summer language program with strict time/scheduling restrictions made it difficult to really do anything more than go to class, eat, study, go to required activities, do homework, and go out for the little bit of free time available. And during the weekends, I just wanted a break, a chance to go out and explore Taiwan, where both of my parents were born but where neither truly grew up. 

Coming back, I jumped almost straight into my sophomore year, adding two internships to my 15 credit course load. It's safe to assume that I've been buried and been seriously hit by a case of the sophomore slump. And while I'm still trying to figure out how to make time for everything that I love and want to do, getting back to this blog is one of them. But after thinking long and hard about it, I've decided to shake things up on this blog for a bit. 

I love reading travel blogs, and I enjoy being part of the college blogging community. Each is unique and has so much to offer. I haven't been interacting with many people yet, but I want to be better about that, especially on social media and by commenting on blogs. However, upon reflection, I realized that my blog post ideas have started to lean more towards what I think an audience would want. What to do in x country, Top tips for x, How to survive this or get through that, How to stay organized, How to pack, etc etc. And while those are great and I love them as much as the next person, I don't see myself having anything substantially new to add to that. It's being said and done.

I want to turn this blog back into what it was meant to be--a place, a platform for me to talk about the things I want to talk about. So that means there will still be the occasional audience-oriented post, simply because that's what I feel like writing about or feel like I can contribute to. I want to create a series around my experiences in Taiwan. But I realized I love learning about the history and culture of a place, and I don't think many of the "popular" posts really go into that. I want to do more photo journalism and blog-journaling. 

And most of all, I want to talk about the hard issues, the current events, which matter to me. I want to write about things I think about on a daily or constant basis. I want to talk about inequality, about feeling hopeless in this crazy world, about development, about all that. That's just on top of the usual topics--school/college, travel, adventures, coffee shops, music, books, movies, TV shows. So there will still be a lot of the same, just presented in a different framework. 

I want this to be about both me and my readers, not just about my readers. I want to reach people, but I also want this to be my platform to talk about issues which aren't necessarily discussed in either community I've been dipping into but which are huge and important. If I lose the few followers I have or make it hard to get people to read my blog, that's okay. Because I want to be doing this for myself too. I don't want the expectation of pleasing people weighing down on me because that means I'll just keep putting it off--because you can't please everyone.

I want to post just once a week or even every other week. I will still post much of the same content on Instagram as I have been, and I want to be better at tweeting for this blog, but I want it to be authentic to me, and me isn't just about travels and college, though that's also a huge part of me. I want it to be like talking to my friends, and my friends and I talk about the uncertainty of the future, about politics, about the world, etc.

I'll take it slowly because I'm still overwhelmed by sophomore year on a daily basis, but I do hope you'll come along with me. I know I've set myself on a tough and possibly disappointing road with this because I don't see my blog fitting into the mainstream of any community, but I hope you'll find it insightful, informative, and enjoyable. I hope it'll make you think, allow you to learn, and give us both the opportunity to figure out our opinions and the things we have to say. The sophomore slump and the blogging slump are so, so real, but hopefully this will help.

Come along for the journey. This is a big change, but life is a series of infinite golden floors, and I do sure hope this one is a golden one. Thank you for supporting me in this new adventure.