We were lucky to catch up with RUBA SHAHZADA recently and have shared our conversation below.
RUBA, so many exciting things to discuss, we can’t wait. Thanks for joining us and we appreciate you sharing your wisdom with our readers. So, maybe we can start by discussing optimism and where your optimism comes from?
The minute I think about my mother, I recall her bright red lipstick with a gorgeous smile on her face. My mom passed away in summer of 2021, with her gone, all my memory brings is her beautiful spirit, positivity, and her love for life. While growing up, my mother always told me to love myself and taught me to live my life to the fullest and cherish those precious moments of laughter.
During my 20s, coming out of an abusive 1-year marriage and being divorced at the age of 23 while still studying in a university in Jordan (Middle East), it wasn’t easy for me to see myself walking in the university corridors while others are just meeting up for that passionate young love stories, in which I felt I was left behind with a broken heart and mind.
Being a woman in Jordan is never easy, and being divorced is even harder, where the society is a male dominant and I was an easy target for the hormonal males enticing me to a Romeo and Juliette story, but after steamy nights, I was Juliette without her Romeo. All those factors together made me fragile, hating my destiny, wishing to die, and full of the green envy monster when I saw my relatives and friends marrying the love of their lives.
Attending weddings in my 20s was my absolute nightmare! Complaining about them, my mother was always there reminding me to love myself, a phrase that never sunk in until I hit my 30s.
So, what changed in my 30s, and why the sudden waking up?
When I turned 29 I jumped into my second marriage to someone whose biggest ambition was how to get more money from me and climb my social ladder, given that he did not finish any school studies and his jobs ranged as bar host or restaurant bartender at the time I was HR Manager at one of the elite governmental institute with direct access to Jordan’s VVIPs, so you can guess that after 1 year of this marriage, we got divorced in a nasty court divorce.
By coincidence and matched with the perfect timing of my divorce, I was offered the job of dreams at the top airline company managing the Middle East Region.
Together, all of a sudden, I felt empowered, I felt unstoppable, so strong and no one could obstruct my dreams. It was the moment when I finally loved myself, and looked at myself that I deserved to be happy, I deserved to attract the abundance, I deserved to get the best jobs, I deserved to get the best relationship.
During this dream job, I met my now husband who made me choose him and move to where he lived in the UK and my life has shifted 360 degrees in the most beautiful way (I had lots of challenges from finding a job, making a new social circle, learning a new culture) but because my daily attitude has changed, and loving myself became my number 1 priority, I achieved most of my dreams and still achieve them.
Now I am in my 40s decade and I chose to change my career, yet still with my supportive husband for almost 9 years (from the date of this article being published). And my daily routine of loving myself is waking up early, making my coffee, journaling, exercising and then starting my day.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
2 years ago I took the leap of faith and left the HR corporate world and decided to become a travel blogger for Hidden Gems Places. Because of my passion for travelling and having been to 33 countries and counting, my social circle always comes to me whenever they want to plan their travels. What differentiates me from other travel bloggers is that I enjoy slow travelling to unique places exploring their gems and not following the crowded tourist places. I do thorough research on where to go, nearby villages, the beaten track places in addition to looking for unique places to stay, for me travelling is about staying at comfortable stays to enable me to enjoy the places I visit, to me it is a full experience. That is why my blog is dedicated to the working class who have either a few days or to few weeks to go and explore hidden gems without compromising the quality of the accommodation. My blog TravelwithRuba offers in-depth articles for special places in Europe and Southeast Asia. In 2024 I am moving to settle in the Puglia region in Italy and from there I will be arranging group tours to explore this beautiful region that is still away from the excessive tourist crowds that hit other regions in Italy.
I have also prepared some E-itineraries for Italy, all you need to do is to click on the accommodation of choice and book your trip, the research is completely done by me and I guarantee you will have an incredible experience exploring the cities I recommended.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The three qualities and skills that impacted my journey were first my writing skills and the storytelling technique I use in my blog, in addition to the extensive travels I do and did in my journey that made me learn from my travelling mistakes such as late planning when the first I planned to travel to Italy during the summer season, now I do my bookings as early as in January and February. The third skill is my passion for communicating my experience with the world and learning new skills concerning blogging and social media and utilizing them to my blog’s benefit.
The advice I give to every start-up, is to invest in yourself and your learnings, it may feel like the investment is high, but trust me, you will see the benefit of the learnings as you are going through your journey, and be resilient and never stop moving forward, being consistent is crucial alongside patency, after all, Rome wasn’t built in one day! Good Luck!
What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?
Being a solo in my travel blog business requires lots of educating myself in digital marketing and social media plus creating the content on different channels in addition to writing a blog that could rank at the first page on Google Search and attracting traffic to my blog and monetising that traffic. In addition to the core responsibilities, there is the admin side and website maintenance and as a single person working solo, it takes a lot of time and I find it very difficult to manage and juggle tasks especially when I am travelling. To reduce the overwhelmed by my tasks I use several tools to help organise my tasks, first tool I start my day with journaling, followed by writing down my to-do list and checking the day before what I accomplished and reviewing my lists. I also use planning for a 2-week to 1-month strategy for my newsletter and Pinterest account.
When I am travelling I make sure the week before I complete as many tasks as I can and when I travel I just indulge in the travelling.
Some other tools people find useful are Tailwind and Slack apps to organise their days, I must say, I tried them, but they didn’t work for me, it added more stress to my lifestyle, but I know for some those apps are helpful.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.travelwithruba.com
- Instagram: travelwithruba
- Facebook: Travel with Ruba
- Other: Pinterest: Travelwithruba
Image Credits
Matera vintage shots: Photo credit the talented Emanuele_Taccardi (IG Account) Algarve sea photo credit: (IG) Algarve photo. Name: Paulina Kaminska
