We started this blog back in November 2016 as an opportunity to share our love for travel and adventure travel tips, itineraries, and our random thoughts. The goal of the blog is to show how working professionals can have fun and take vacation while holding a full-time career. We didn’t know what to expect with blogging, what the audience would be like, or even how to SEO (search engine optimization) our posts. Every day is a learning curve and we still consider ourselves “newbies.” It’s amazing to celebrate our one year anniversary with blogging! After many hours of creating travel content and choosing the best photos, blogging is a rewarding hobby to contribute our perspective of our global adventures.

Thank you to our readers for supporting our small blog and commenting on posts. Every “like” for our social media posts is a small win for us. We’re passionate about the blog and our readers drive us to try harder and continue to succeed in the blogging world.

About The Liebster Award

Recognizing bloggers for their efforts is the greatest compliment. The Liebster Award is an opportunity for bloggers to recognize and support other bloggers for their achievements. It’s geared towards blogs with smaller viewership of 200 readers or less, but anyone is allowed in the nomination process. How one determines 200 readers is unknown, but our Life Of Doing social media accounts are under the threshold.

The Liebster Award is available from January 1 – December 31, 2018. All nominations are voluntary and if the blogger chooses to accept the award, the rules are below:

1. Create a new blog post and thank the person who nominated you. It’s courteous to place the nominator’s link in the post.
2. Display the award on your blog.
3. Write a small post on what makes you passionate about blogging.
4. Provide 10 random facts about yourself.
5. Answer the set of questions given to you by nominator.
6. Nominate 5-11 blogs who deserve the award.
7. Create a set of unique questions for your nominated bloggers.
8. List these rules in the blog post.
9. Inform readers that you’ve been nominated and share with news with your nominated bloggers. You can also share your post about the nomination in the comment section of the Liebster Award link above for a chance to win a prize.

10 Random Facts About Us

1. Justin and I are in our 30s and we were born at the same hospital (only 6 months apart).
2. We’ve known each other for 14 years and married for 8 years.
3. Fitness is important to us so we try to do some physical activity each day, whether it is a circuit training, biking, hiking, running, etc. If we’re back in the Bay Area, we’ll invite you on a hike up the strenuous Mission Peak in Fremont, California.
4. Drinking tea (green or oolong) is one of our favorite daily rituals.
5. Sleep is a high priority for us. We need at least 8-9 hours of sleep each day or we’re cranky.
6. Food is life. Justin will try any unique items at least once, such as guinea pig and cicada. I’ll gravitate towards the fruits, vegetables, and sushi.
7. Even though we eat healthy, we love desserts such as cake and pies. A balanced diet is key.
8. We don’t keep a budget for our travels or daily spendings. We have our willingness to spend for something and stick to it.
9. Instead of buying a souvenir, we prefer to send postcards to family members, friends, and ourselves. It takes extra effort to write a postcard and is more memorable than a trinket.
10. If we don’t have any travel or weekend plans, we’re perfectly fine relaxing at home watching anime or movies.

Questions and Answers Time

Manjul provided the questions and here are our answers.

1. When did you find your passion about blogging?

Blogging is similar to training for and running a marathon. The beginning of writing a blog post is slow and challenging with creating content. The tapering process is putting your final touches and editing the post. The finish is pressing the “publish” button and sharing the blog post to the world. While it’s exhausting and exhilarating, the “high” of the endorphins allows you to continue with blogging and write more (or sign up for another marathon if using the running analogy).

We found our passion for blogging when we started the journey. It was exciting to write about our past travels and also reminiscing about our travels while looking through the photos. Our sleep was interrupted as we would stay up late due to our grand ideas on what to write about. Over the course of the year, we’ve been better at time managing our blogging. It helps that Justin and I collaborate and encourage each other drive us to create our best work.

2. If you have to do something to protect nature, what would you do?

The world is engulfed by plastic. We often see the photos of beautiful places that are littered with washed up plastic bags or bottles or sea animals who eat plastic particles thinking that it’s food. Unfortunately the plastic will not degrade and get stuck in their location for a long time. If we had a magic wand, we would ban using plastic and have vendors use a more sustainable material for their products. Although, it isn’t realistic to ban plastic, it’s educating people to lessen their waste and encourage or even subsidize the use of reusable materials. We take our reusable bags and water bottles everywhere.

3. Where you want to travel if have a chance to get free ticket for that?

Traveling is a part of our lifestyle, so we would want to go everywhere! If we had to choose, we’ll choose either an around the world ticket to visit as many places as possible or visit Antarctica. We can’t wait to see the icebergs and the remoteness of Antarctica.

4. How do you feel to be nominated for the Liebster Award?

We’re honored for the nomination and recognition from Manjul and other bloggers. It’s challenging to be a small fish in the blogging world. Thank you to everyone’s support and kind words.

5. What inspires you to blog every day?

Unfortunately, we don’t blog every day. It’s one of our hobbies and we haven’t been as consistent with it. Since we’ve settled down to our new home in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, there is more time to spend on blogging. What inspires us to blog is writing about our travel experiences whether it is local or international and sharing with our readers.

6. What is your motto in life?

We embrace the “life of doing” rather than waiting for things to happen. Everyone is in control of their own lives and how they want to live. Mentors and supporters will help people reach their goals.

7. How do you get motivation in life when surrounded by negativity?

We tend to have positive thinking majority of the time. If there is negativity, the best way is to remove the negative aspect and environment immediately. It’s not worth the extra stress. We recommend Marie Kondo’s book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.” One of the main takeaways is to only keep things that spark joy in your life and discard things that do not.

8. What is your favorite game and why?

One of our favorite games is related to exercise and fitness. If you need a good circuit training, it’s called “Deck of Cards.” All you need is shuffled deck of cards, floor mat, and some workout music. Each suite represents a different exercise and is customizable depending on the fitness level. For example:

• • Diamonds: Reverse lunges (optional: holding dumbbells)
  • Hearts: Abs bicycle crunches
  • Clubs: Squat, bicep curl, and shoulder press (with dumbbells)
  • Spades: Seal jacks or jumping jacks
  • Ace: 15 burpees

The goal is to complete the number of reps for each suite and finish the entire deck of cards as quickly as possible. If you have a card with the numbers 2-10, then the numbers of reps is doubled (ie: 2 of hearts becomes 4 abs bicycle crunch). Jacks is 11 reps, Queen is 12, and King is 13. It’s fun since the exercises are random and drawn. You’ll sweat by the end of the challenge!

9. If your favorite film star asks you to write for him/her, how will you react?

We don’t have a favorite film star, but love watching Ellen DeGeneres’s show. Our jaws will drop over the exciting news and the opportunity to work with her. Ellen is down to earth, funny, and has a positive outlook on life. We must have done something to showcase our writing skills for her to reach out to us. After the news settles down, we’ll head straight to understanding the vision and expectations for the movie, television arc, or whatever the writing assignment is for.

10. What inspires you to write?

We love staying up to date on the news and reading about travels and fitness. Everyone craves connection and having a voice. The words and stories from writers, or even seeing beautiful photos and landscapes on Instagram inspires us to share our life story and perspectives.

11. What is your message to the world?

Let’s share the “Life Of Doing” movement! Everyone has the opportunity to explore the world. Take the first step to find somewhere to go whether it is local or international and plan how to achieve this travel. The travel doesn’t have to be expensive. Focus your time and energy on what is important to you.

Announcing Our Nominations

Congratulations to the following bloggers who we’ve nominated for the Liebster Award!

• From Real People – Travel to places? Good eats? Places to enjoy a drink? Want to learning about independent businesses? Check! Visit John’s blog to have a unique perspective during his traveling adventures.  
• Travel Through My Eye – Family travels are fun and exciting! Follow Sudeshna’s journey as she and her family wanders through India, Indonesia, and other places, and shares itineraries and recommended places to visit.
• Travasty – Need some travel inspiration? Check out Kalyan’s travel and lifestyle blog as he conquers the world and share his stories. The blog also has awesome photos.
• Cassidy’s Adventures – Cassidy is an adventurer in Rome and her blog focuses on travel, lifestyle, and fashion. She wants to inspire you to take an adventure around the world.
• The Hot Flash Packer – If you need some adventure in your life, check out Lisa’s blog. You’ll read fun and unique stories and itineraries about various destinations,  undiscovered gems, and much more.

Our Questions To Nominees

1. What inspired you to start your blog?
2. If you were stranded on an island, what is the one kitchen utensil you would have on-hand with you? Why is it important?
3. If you’re an astronaut and you traveled into a black hole, what would you like to see on the other side?
4. Where is your favorite place to visit? Why?
5. What activity is on your bucket list? (It doesn’t need to be travel related.)
6. What is one thing you cannot travel without?
7. Would you rather lose all of your money and valuables or all of the photos that you’ve taken?
8. What is one of the best memories that you had during your travels?
9. What is a unique/unusual food item that you ate during traveling?
10. What is one blogging tip that you would like to share with new bloggers?  

We had a lot of fun with this blog post. Although it is different than our typical travel itinerary, it was rewarding to have the recognition of the Liebster Award and share more about us.

What other questions would you like to know about us? Share in the comments below.

The post Nominated for Liebster Award 2018 appeared first on Life Of Doing.

Our readers are amazing! We love you! Thank you for sticking with us as we continue to figure things out! We launched the blog to share our global travel excursions, itineraries, photos, and helpful travel tips. Plus, we wanted to share how travel is possible when working at full-time jobs.

Here are our ah-ha moments and reflections from the past year of blogging. Cheers to more years to come!

1. Blogging takes dedication, patience, and lots of effort.

It’s no joke that blogging is hard work. Whenever you learn or start something new, there is a huge learning curve. Passion and dedication was in our minds when launching the blog, and we continue to embrace with the blog. It took us a month brainstorming ideas for our blog domain name and Justin said “Life Of Doing” on a whim. After finalizing our domain name, we signed up with a self-hosted Wordpress account. This is a must so you can have full control over your website!

Who knew a blog had so many components to think about such as widgets, plugins, contact forms, and more? Let’s give everyone who manages a website a round of applause! We’re often stuck on how to do something. Our motivation allows us to  figure things out and leveraged Google searches and YouTube videos.

Blogging is our “second” unpaid job. Juggling a full-time job, home life, exercising, and working on the blog during the evenings is challenging. Yet, we have fun with it and have our moments in the “blogging zone”. We try to have new content out on the blog at least weekly, but some weeks are busier than others.

Hard work pays off just like when we reached the Mount Whitney summit

2. It’s a learning process every single day.

We still don’t know what we’re doing 95% of the time. We’re learning something new about blogging, social media, or general travel tips every day. It’s fascinating to read about ways to improve the blog – SEO optimization, best times to post based on social media platforms, and much more. Learning is fun!

3. Collaboration is key.

Justin and I support each other 100% with our blog posts and collaboration with the site. We both contribute to the blog and enjoy having an extra set of “eyes” to review and brainstorm ideas. One of our goals for the next year is to contribute guest posts on other sites and even have them on our site too!

We also participate in various blogging groups on Facebook. It’s the extra motivation for sharing kudos and asking questions to other bloggers.

4. Consistency with social media is key.

We’re not very good with social media and keeping it consistent. It’s hard to keep track of the various social media platforms. As of now, we have Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. We don’t have a Twitter account (the horrors!) There are companies to streamline the channels, schedule posts in advance, and increase Pinterest “pins,” and much more. However, we’re not ready to commit as we have small amount of viewers to the site. This is a work in progress and we’ll have a better strategy for this new year!

5. Stop comparing with others and focus on small wins and personal goals.

We’re not famous, nor do we have a huge following or visitors. It’s natural to compare our site with other blog sites and nitpick how we don’t have the latest glitz and glamour. It’s the perfectionist in us.

We came across blog post that stated how after one year of blogging your site should have solid traffic and 500-1000 email subscribers. Wow! That is impressive. The huge metric made us question our efforts considering our tiny audience.

In perspective, it’s about the small wins that we do have and to stop compare. Everyone’s blog is at different growth stages. It was exciting to have our first comment on our Beijing layover post. It was another celebration when our Instagram page reached over 100 followers. WooHoo! We’ll continue to focus on our personal goals of doing our best and creating awesome content. Bloggers are here to inspire others and help them reach their readers goals!

Thank you again for your support! We can’t wait to continue this journey with you.

Let us know what you would like to see on our blog or places we should travel to. Comment below.

The post One Year of Blogging Reflections appeared first on Life Of Doing.