Last year, around this exact time, I was sitting on a hotel balcony on a little island off of mainland Honduras. The sun was setting, the air smelled like that magical Central American mix between good food and bad exhaust and I was craning my neck so I could pick up WiFi but still have my phone cord reach my room outlet. The reason I was on my phone? This blog.

Here was my view. It actually wasn’t quite so blurry in real life… that can be attributed to my amazing photography skills. Utila, Honduras circa 2013.

I had just received an email from WordPress with my end of year report that was one part readership statistics and another part butt kissing; they told me how great I was, how great my blog was and how 2013 was going to be another great year for my blog. It was a thinly veiled (if there was even a veil at all) marketing ploy to win back wayward bloggers. Veil or no veil, I ate it right up.

Right there on that deck chair with my neck craned I read through my 17 or so posts from 2012. They made me smile and I vowed to get back into blogging after my four month hiatus – after, of course, I finished my vacation in the Caribbean. I kept my resolution and soon after I arrived back stateside, I published this post: Where I’ve Been: Not here where I apologized for my absence and got myself back on track. Then, I continued to publish 53 posts in 2013, a fairly big jump from 17.

This year I’m having a flashback. I was at home in Portland when I received the email with my annual blogging report but it affected me the exact same way. I relished in their generic encouragement, I immediately took some time to read through my 2013 blog posts and I felt rejuvenated and inspired to make 2014 a good blogging year.

See? There are even fireworks. That means they think I’m special!

So after a little over a month long hiatus, I’m going to start fresh and start getting some posts up.

To kick things off I want to share some thoughts on SeeJulesTravel’s 2013 year… things that the annual blogging report may have missed.

• A fun addition to the site: The Timeline & Gallery page. The when and where of my passport’s past. Also, who doesn’t love pictures?

It goes all the way back to 2002.

• Another good addition: My Travel Map. This is still a work in progress but I love it anyway.

It’s just so pretty!

• What still needs some work: My tagging system. When I first started blogging I added a tag for every country mentioned within a post but when I put my travel map together I realized that maybe I should have been a bit more selective. Case in point, you might notice that Iraq is on my travel map with a link to Iraq blog posts. The problem is that I’ve never been there and that link goes to one post that happens to contain a picture of Andy’s military days.

Hmm… this seems a little misleading.

Like the folks at WordPress, I too think that SeeJulesTravel is looking forward to a great 2014. Thanks to my loyal readers to sticking by me and I promise, good things are afoot.

Happy New Year!