I started this blog in 2013. I had moved to New Zealand a couple of months before and I remember finding online a list of 150 things to do/visit in Auckland and I thought it would be great to try and tick as many as possible and maybe write something about it, that’s how it all started.

It was never about having people read it, and it took me a while to even post a picture of myself (I still struggle with that) I saw this blog more like a diary, to go back and remember places, and events and yummy things I ate along the way.

As time went by I started getting more and more into it, uploading 3 times a week, researching, editing and reading other blogs the rest of the days and I was happy, always thinking what else I could upload, going to blogging events, meeting a great group of girls in Auckland that were into the same ‘world’.

I don’t think I ever stressed about it, maybe because the blog never go ‘that big’, so I was able to keep it as a hobby. It did introduced me to a whole new world of things, photo editing, writing, food styling and so on, but I don’t think I was ever one of those number crunching, SEO fanatics always trying to expand and get more and more readers.

After a couple of years, I started to feel more and more disconnected to this blog, maybe it was the lack of time, maybe I wanted to enjoy more things instead of documenting them, and I think that showed… in the lack of consistency in uploading in the last couple of years.

2017 was a weird year, I’ve talked about it in one of my latest post, another move, another starting over, dealing and understanding my newly found thyroid problem I found myself only writing just to upload something, picking up projects and leaving them half way because… meh why bother?… and I realise that is awful, that goes almost against the reason I started to write here in the first place.

What I mean to say is, I think is time to say goodbye to this blog, I think we had a good run, The Kiwi Diaries opened a lot of new possibilities, introduced me to lovely people and help me travel through a new country with a different perspective, but I think I’ll leave it at that. Who knows I might write from time to time, but after 5 years and 3 countries I think is time to put the pen down (or the keyboard more like it)

If you read, have read this blog, commented or not, lurked in the shadows of the interwebz, I hope you’ve enjoyed it, I hope it made you laugh or helped you learn a new recipe, made you wunderlust or simply entertained you. Thank you and we might be meeting again. And given I started this blog with a Maori greeting…I might as well

Haere rā The Kiwi Diaries

Jules.