Well, hello there! My name is Kayleigh (or Ceilidh, if you want to use the original spelling), and this is my new blog.

I have blogged a lot in my life, about several things – my personal life, baking, travelling, and mental health, to name a few. When I was in my mid- to late-teens, I wrote a blog post every day. As an adult, though, my blogging fervour has stagnated. Life got in the way. My health and an apparently chronic case of writer’s block were the main reasons, but I was also unhappy with not having my own ‘space’. I was blogging on third party sites, and had no direction or niche – it was a real motivation killer.

Somewhat related to lack of motivation, and for the sake of full disclosure: I have been sitting on this website for over two years. Launching has been pushed back over and over due to crippling perfectionism, fear of failure, never feeling quite ready to start, and constant overthinking.

Following encouragement from friends (first gentle, and then increasingly aggressive as I umm-ed and ahh-ed over every potential catastrophic outcome), and from a coach I’m working with, made me finally look at what I’ve got and set a date to Just Start. To hell with the consequences. So, here I am, Just Starting.

A Bleak Midwinter

Winter is a dreadful, difficult time for me (like many people – shout out to my seasonal-affective babes). So it came as a surprise when, during a mental health walk on a cold, grey day, this idea hit me like a tonne of bricks. I was considering what I actually want to do with my life, and was answered with this thought: all I want to do is go to weird places and write about it. Suddenly, loads of ideas were flying around my brain. Some of them won’t happen for a while (if ever), but it was so thrilling to feel like the creative floodgates had suddenly opened. I felt excited for it. You really do know it when it hits you.

Thus, A Morbid Tourist began to form.

Investing in My Blog & Myself

I have had a ‘proper’ website in the past – it was short-lived, and failed dismally because I didn’t have my reason why. I was also at a really difficult, aimless point in my life and couldn’t find the motivation to work on it. So I deleted it and that was that for several years.

I’ve been working really hard on managing my chronic conditions and trying to get to a physical and mental place where I felt I could handle working again. The job market is a mess at the moment (and has been for years now), so I haven’t had much luck with applying for other companies. Instead, I started taking all of the freelance writing and editing gigs I could get.

I started to feel energised about making a Real Blog again, and sharing my love of morbid travel with everyone. It was like taking a running leap off of the end of the earth and into total darkness, which was exhilarating and terrifying. I’m a highly-strung, very Type-A person so doing something this bold was very out of character.

Deciding I needed to have an ‘official’ slice of the internet, I took the plunge and paid for website hosting (Bluehost, in case you’re curious). I wanted to start working towards my dream job, instead of just writing it off as a pipe dream.

The Beginning

There was a lot of content I’d already written on my other free blogs, that I wanted to transplant onto A Morbid Tourist. Part of the initial set-up was to take all of the posts I wanted to re-post, and read them over. I then edited, pruned, and polished the old posts into new, hopefully better ones. While doing that, I was also writing new posts (including this one!) to add to the blog bit by bit.

I spent absolutely ages tweaking the look and layout of the site, and I’m not sure I’m even happy with it as it is now. I’m annoyingly particular about things like this, and if the image in my head doesn’t align with reality I’m not satisfied. Even so, I got it to a place where it looks neat and cohesive, and it’s functional. That will have to do for now.

During mid-2022, I had to put the blog on the back burner for quite a while because I had a lot of freelance work to do, as well as finally learning to drive, which took up most of my time. It was really frustrating to get to the end of the week and feel too burnt-out to write anything.

Instead of continuing to put it off until it’s absolutely perfect, I decided I needed two more things before I could launch: A logo and a schedule. I am lucky enough to know a lot of creative people, so I had a whole list of people I could’ve asked for help in designing the logo. I didn’t have to look far though – I messaged Luke, a friend of mine from uni, and asked if he’d be able to make what I had in mind. And he delivered it at lightning speed – the passport stamp with a plague doctor silhouette in the middle that you see at the top of this blog, as well as all over my social media pages.

As for the schedule, I took a bit longer with it because – as always – I overthought it and kept pushing the launch back/not even looking at the blog for weeks and weeks at a time because it was never the ‘right time’ to do it. I now know it’ll NEVER be the right time and that I’m never going to feel like I’m actually ready to do this, so I have to just take the plunge and get started.

I have a lot of self-doubt and often have to ignore the nasty voice in my head saying ‘why are you writing at all? Who would even care about what you have to say?’ I have to remember to write for myself, because I love it, because I want to share experiences and information with people. I have to hope that I will meet similar people to work with and play with, and make this thing into something I can be proud of. I’ve let my own perfectionism ruin so many opportunities in my life, and I’m trying not to let that happen with this.

Obviously I have no idea how this is going to go. It might be the best decision I’ve ever made and everything works out the way I hope. Or it could fall completely flat. Either way I have nothing to lose by putting it out there and trying to make it work. I will warn you that things might be all over the place for a while – literally. I don’t want to post all of my stuff from one particular place at once, so we’re going to be jumping around a bit. This is how I’ll do it until I work out some kind of coherent posting pattern (if that ever happens), so please bear with me!

I want a lot of things for this blog. I want to create a community of ghouls like me who like to explore the stranger side of the world, and who love ghost stories. I want this to be a personal blog, a travel blog, an information point, and a portfolio for my own work. I want to make it interesting and exciting, and hopefully more collaborative one day. Mostly though, I want to do what I’ve always dreamed of – going anywhere and everywhere, and then writing about it.

You can also follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
I hope you’ll come along for the ride!