Running on False Confidence and Caffeine: How I Changed My Own Life

Oct 2
3 min read

By Georgia Wright

Two years ago, I sat in front of my computer, drained from yet another day of office politics, thinking, “There has to be more to life than this.”

Every morning felt like a repeat of the last—meetings that could have been emails, polite small talk over microwave lunches, and that sinking feeling on Sunday evenings.

By Friday, I’d usually started daydreaming about weekend escapes, only to spend them catching up on laundry and googling ‘cheap flights to anywhere.’

That quiet frustration turned into something louder when I realised the root of the problem: I wasn’t built to work for other people.

I’m not a people person, and I knew deep down that I needed out.

So, I made a choice that changed everything. I started a travel blog.

At the time, it didn’t feel like stepping into power. It felt like winging it. I bought a domain, opened a blank Google Doc, and started writing about our first ever trip to Paris. My blog, FirstStepEurope.com, was born with zero readers and a lot of second-guessing.

I still remember hitting ‘publish’ for the first time, heart pounding and terrified people from my personal life would find it and laugh me off of Facebook. Nobody read it, obviously. I checked my stats a dozen times a day anyway, as if someone might magically find it and leave a comment.

What followed was 12 months of unpaid work squeezed in around a full-time job and a never-ending to-do list.

I invested a lot of my own money, including paying for the Scale Your Travel Blog course, which helped me shift from hobby mode into something serious.

I spent hours watching tutorials on things I didn’t even know existed: canonical tags, alt text, Pinterest pinning strategies. For a while, I was convinced I’d broken my website every time I changed a font.

There were moments I wanted to pack it in, like when I lost an entire post because I forgot to hit save, or when a stranger’s comment asked me if I’d even been to Paris because I pinned a freebie pin in the wrong place.

But, slowly, it started to work.

Posts I’d written were climbing search rankings.

Traffic grew from nothing to 10,000, then 20,000… and now over 44,000 people a month read my blog.

But the truth is, I didn’t feel powerful through most of that. I felt like a fluke. I was overwhelmed by imposter syndrome for months, brushing off every win as “just luck.”

It’s only recently that I’ve started acknowledging this for what it really is: the result of hard work, persistence, and more late nights than I care to admit.

The real ‘pinch me’, though? When readers started reaching out.

Getting messages from people planning their first trip to Prague, or someone thanking me for helping them avoid a travel disaster, made all the late nights worth it.

Suddenly, I wasn’t just shouting into the void anymore—I was part of a little community of people as excited (and nervous) as I was about their next adventure.

And, finally, in the next few months, I’ll be leaving my office job to work on the blog full time.

I’ll be travelling across Europe, creating content on the ground, and building something that doesn’t rely on anyone else giving me permission.

Something that means I don’t have to watch my husband slave for 12 hours in a warehouse just so we can afford a weekend away.

Right now, I’m focusing on growing the business behind the blog; building partnerships, connecting with brands, and turning this into something that’s not just sustainable,

but scalable.

I’ve also launched Facebook and Instagram pages to support that, where I share helpful content for first-time travellers in hopes of diversifying my income streams.

This journey has been equal parts terrifying and exciting...but it’s mine.

That’s what stepping into my power looks like. Not some big flashy moment, but choosing to back myself even when I wasn’t sure I deserved it.

Rebuilding my confidence after years of feeling small.

Creating something that gives me the freedom I’ve always craved.

I’m Georgia, and I didn’t take a leap of faith. I built a runway and ran like hell. And I’m just getting started.

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