Should this be the end?

I am not sure what is going on, but on several occasions over the past couple of weeks I have been toying with the idea of ending the blog.

I know.. I know...

You might be asking, WHY?

Well....

I have several reasons.

Maybe they aren't good. Maybe they are silly.. but I am just not feeling like.. writing here.

Weird?

I am coming up on 3 years, almost daily sharing on Destination Unknown. I have poured my heart and soul out on this page.

In the beginning, it was sort of an unknown little place to share my life with my exchange students and family around the world. Imagine how incredibly difficult it is to send letters, flooding someones email inbox, or even calling around 14 students, and about 10 friends and family in Egypt. (Let's not forget my family living in Georgia.) It worked as a place to sort of.. share.

I don't know what changed, but by March of 2010, suddenly my 8 followers blew up into 56 followers (and hung in there for months.) Interesting bloggers from around the world started sharing their lives with me. I felt honored and intrigued by their comments, and was blown away by their blogs. It sort of opened up a whole new world for me. I think back then, my total blog views for an entire month was around 100.

By 2011, I had hundreds of followers, maybe 2,000 a month in views, and a dedicated group of actual friends on FB following and commenting. It was fun to share my life and my challenges with people from my past and getting feedback from them. It served a purpose during a difficult transition for me,  an even better distraction from a difficult job and even more challenging cultural exchange at home.

Here we are in 2012 and right before I started my new job I was reaching almost 56,000 views a week (now the views are much lower... around 23,000 or so a week,) and hundreds more are following. I'm not bragging.. I promise... but I am actually getting to a point -

I am having a hard time not sharing my personal life. Does that make sense? With my new job, I am thrust back into the public eye and in a much smaller pond and it sometimes feels like my every move is being judged. Heck, I even got hate mail after doing a tv interview. I don't know how you would handle it, but for me.. it really sucked. There is no other way to put it.

My personal life is basically shit these days. By having to keep it a little more personal, it is actually driving me more insane. I thought about starting another blog, an anonymous blog, and using that space to tell my more personal story.. but I am not a big believer in hiding. I like to live out loud.. and unfortunately, it's not as much an option as it used to be.

Also, I don't get a lot of feedback anymore. No.. I'm not doing it for feedback, but it does make  the experience sooo much better. I see the numbers - but the sharing of thoughts is sort of gone... and as a writer, though we hate to admit it, we need that feedback. Our writing is like a conversation, one we throw out there and hope that someone will eventually read our thoughts and say to us, "Yes.. I understand." It makes it all worth while.

*exhale*

When I stop to think about.. who wants to read this crap? Who actually reads it? WHY do you read it?

I feel so self-indulgent sometimes.. sharing everything with anyone... and... oh... I don't know...

What am I doing right? What am I doing wrong? WHY do I bother?

Do you get anything out of this?

Is it even worth it to continue?

These are the questions I am pondering....