My sustainable travel site, Arimo Travels, turns 10 this month. Here’s a look back to the last 10 years.
I originally launched Arimo Travels in May 2016, a few weeks before the start of what would become a 777-day trip around the world.
My first blog post, “How Preparing for Long-Term Travel Differs from Shorter Trips“, set the tone for things to come. Reading it now, you can tell that it’s the first blog post I ever wrote in English. Still, I love the intimate feeling of the post. It really captures the essence of that specific time in my life.
I quickly shifted my focus from personal reflections to sustainable travel guides for others. Later, inspired by my own journeys to random places around the world, I created over 140 random generators for others.
As the site celebrates its 10th anniversary, I thought this would be a good time to look back, summarizing my travels, personal life, and the development of this site over the last decade.
Besides the anniversary, there’s another reason why I want to write this post. At least for now, this will be the last blog post on Arimo Travels, and I want to give this chapter in my life a proper send-off.
Ten Years of Travel
By the time I launched Arimo Travels, I had already done several longer trips, including a few train trips across Europe, backpacking in Nepal, and a train trip from Finland to North Korea. However, the duration of those trips was counted in weeks or months, not years.
Even as years go by, the two years I spent on the road remain a very influential period of my life. The journey affected my mindset and personality in numerous ways. Even though I got back to Finland in 2018, I feel that a part of me never returned.
After traveling around the world, I spent more time exploring my own surroundings. I haven’t traveled as much as I used to, but I did not abandon traveling completely – I just stopped sharing my travels online. Last year, my partner and I actually did another, shorter trip around the world.
If it weren’t for the negative impact on the environment, I’d be happy to keep on traveling. However, as sustainability is very close to my heart, I’ve come to accept that living by values means finding experiences closer to home.
Ten Years of… Aging?
When I launched Arimo Travels, I was 24 years old. I am 34 now. Deep down, I still feel some connection with the person I was back then. But the passing of time is undeniable both on the inside and the outside.
Soon after finishing with my trip around the world, I was diagnosed with acoustic neuroma, a benign brain tumor. I soon lost hearing in my left ear, but other than that, the illness hasn’t done too much to hinder my well-being.
I finished my psychology studies after COVID, and have been working in the field since. Recently, my partner and I bought our first home together. Suddenly life has become much more predictable and stable than what it used to be, and I’m mostly fine with that.
Here, I do recognize an internal conflict. At the same time, I remember how I wasn’t this happy when I traveld full time. Staying in one place and maintaining social connections in daily life is much better for my well-being than constant travel on savings. A stable life also doesn’t mean I’ve had to leave adventures out completely.
But still, whenever I see a map of the world, my eyes start tracking possible routes, passing through places I’ve never been to. A part of the longing is about traveling, but I believe it’s more about missing my youth.
Ten Years of Travel Writing
Arimo Travels started as a travel blog before becoming a broader website about traveling and randomness. I was also active on Instagram and Facebook, but I wasn’t trying very hard. Back then, I already felt that polished travel content made the destinations look too good. I felt pride about posting unremarkable and unfiltered photos.
For as long as I remember, people have been talking about the decline of blogs. At first, it seemed that social media would take its place. But in the last few years, AI has changed the digital landscape in unexpected ways.
As an expanding portion of online content is AI-created, personal reflections like this feel like a relic from another time. But it is not just personal posts that are affected. Guides like the ones I used to write have become a lot less popular, being replaced by narrow AI summaries.
When I started Arimo Travels, I held many strong ideals. For example, I resisted putting any ads on the site, as I felt that went against my values. After all, the point of the site was to help others, not to make a profit, and I didn’t want to make the user experience worse for my own personal gain.
Now, I welcome the tiny passive income that the ads bring me. I tell myself that it’s okay as everyone else is doing it anyway, but I’m not sure what 24-year-old Arimo would say about that.
Years to Come
Now, after 10 years, I am putting Arimo Travels on an indefinite hiatus. Here’s why.
During the last ten years, I’ve tried to use Arimo Travels as a platform for advocating sustainability. However, sustainable travel is very difficult, and it’s better to reduce travel altogether. Even if I try to focus on sustainability, I end up talking about a way of life that’s rarely eco-friendly.
Still, I have an urge to do my best to help protect the environment. Luckily I have found better ways of doing that. In the past few years, I’ve been an active member of the local effective altruism community in Finland. Effective altruists try to find ways of doing the most good in evidence-based ways, and this goal is very close to my values.
Instead of abandoning writing online, I’m only changing my platform. Now, I am focusing on writing blog posts for Effective Altruism Finland‘s website in Finnish, and I have plans for similar projects in the future.
I know that very few people will ever find this blog post or read this far. However, that’s not important to me. As online platforms become more impersonal, I like the idea of leaving my own mark in my own personal corner.
Like a message in a bottle, thrown in the immense vastness of the digital ocean.
(Gosh, that was corny.)
The end.
