People cared on the road. Online, almost nobody did.

I built the wrong website.

Technically, it worked. It documented my 6,000-kilometre walk across Europe, explained the WTFT experiment and offered guides and decision tools.

The problem was what I had built it to do:
It explained my journey without making its relevance to your life sufficiently clear.

So I am rebuilding it. Again.

But that raises a more uncomfortable question:

Why do I keep investing in WTFT when, online at least, apparently so few people care?

The answer begins with a contradiction I have never managed to resolve.

On the road, the interest is real

While walking across Europe and cycling around France, I met people from very different backgrounds.

They often approached me because they were curious about the journey. But the conversations quickly became more personal.

They spoke about careers they had outgrown, decisions they kept postponing, ambitions they had quietly abandoned and changes they wanted to make without knowing where to begin.

They asked why I had left corporate life. How I retired at 45. Why my family became nomadic. What made me believe I could cross Europe on foot at 64.

And then they began wondering what might still be possible for them.

These were not polite conversations with people pretending to be interested. They were engaged. They wanted to understand more. Some began reconsidering assumptions about age, security, work, money or what a fulfilling life could look like.

Those encounters are one reason I continue.

They suggest that the experiences behind WTFT can help people see possibilities they were no longer seeing for themselves.

But online, I have rarely generated the same response.

The translation problem

On the road, a conversation can last an hour.

I can listen, ask questions, understand someone’s circumstances and preserve the nuances that make an idea relevant to their life.

Online, I may have only a few seconds to earn someone’s attention and explain why the same idea matters.

If I simplify it too much, it becomes another empty generality. If I preserve every qualification and nuance, people move on before reaching the point.

That balance is particularly difficult because the problem WTFT addresses is real, but rarely feels urgent.

People postpone decisions, remain in situations that no longer suit them or dismiss possibilities without examining them. The consequences accumulate quietly, often without producing a single moment that demands action.

“Challenge your assumptions” may be important, but it sounds abstract.

I have not yet found the right formula for connecting it to the frustrations, choices and missed possibilities people actually experience but the conversations on the road keep showing me that the value is there.

I am not giving up yet.

What must change

WTFT is not a travel blog, although the road provides many of its stories.

It is not a motivational page about fighting ageing or undertaking unusual challenges.

The objective is to use real-world experiences to uncover assumptions and biases that may be limiting what we believe is possible—and turn what they reveal into practical ideas people can use.

That means everything I publish should do three things:

Start with something authentic.
A conversation, decision, difficulty or contradiction experienced in real life.

Create a perspective shift.
Something that makes you pause and think: I had not looked at it that way.

Offer something practical.
A question, distinction or small experiment you can apply to a decision, behaviour or assumption of your own.

The Experiments create the evidence.
The Field Notes expose the uncertainty while it is still real.
The Perspective Shifts turn what those experiences reveal into something potentially useful to you.

If a post merely tells you what I did, it has not completed its job.

I still don’t know whether it will work

A clearer website does not guarantee an audience.

Useful ideas do not automatically become compelling content.

I may still fail to reproduce online what happens naturally in conversations on the road.

But this version of WTFT begins with a clearer commitment:

Every post should help you question something that feels fixed, uncover a possibility you may have missed or make a more conscious choice about what comes next.

It is a tall order. That is what I am testing now.

Walk your talk,
Franck

P.S.:

• When you encounter WTFT, what do you think it is: travel, ageing, decisions, personal experiments or something else? Reply honestly. Your answer would help me understand whether the new positioning is clear.
• If someone else might relate to this struggle, forward it to them. They can join WTFT here.
• WTFT is free for everyone. If you would like to support the experiments behind it, you can buy me a coffee.