As I started to write this post, I also started doing some random pondering within the interwebs that I’ve gotten used to for these past two decades. For instance, is niche-less blogging still a thing? It probably is after the end of the 2010s decade, but at the same time they are becoming rare now. Those who I used to visit, read, and comment before have moved on to new and different things. And with the pandemic still going on right now since 2020, you would think that more of these niche-less bloggers would have more time to blog about the discoveries and other new things they started to do while staying at home to stay healthy.

It didn’t work for me when it came to niche-less blogging. I still continued on with my J-Pop fangirling, ¹ more self-learning coding courses, the rediscovering of data analysis and data science, and lately, getting a lot more serious with art. I was aiming at digital art first because I thought it was a lot easier, but instead, I find myself doing a lot better with traditional art, using traditional tools such as pencils, pens, markers, and in a few places here and there, watercolor paint. I’ll be writing about all these soon here.

At the start of 2021…

Truth to be told, I really don’t have enough time for me to blog on a regular basis. There’s just no way around it. I can’t exactly afford to just take a few hours to a few days off from work just to blog. I can’t exactly afford to take a few hours to days from my code studying and online art courses. Because of the different set ups between this self-hosted WordPress-powered blog and the WP app installed on my phone, ² I prefer blogging on my laptop.

During breaks at work and whenever I can squeeze in some time, I do some gratitude blogging to remind myself the good things, the bad things, and the meh things that’s happened on that day so far through my phone. It’s kind of like working on a bujo, ³ except it’s on an app. I use the Chiku app to do that. Gratitude blogging is basically just blogging about what you’re thankful for that day, the things that got you in a good mood (or a meh mood), and, depending on the app that you’re using, you even have the option of writing (ranting?) out the things you experienced on that day.

The Chiku app notifies the user twice a day, morning and evening, to help you keep track of your mood, keep track on the things you did today and your feelings towards them, etc. You also have the option of setting up these notifs, such as the hours you want to receive notifications from, the option of bookmarking/adding to your Favorites all the entries and stories you entered on the app for that day, and other things. It really does help calm you down, take some time to reflect on some things, and simply just jot them down. Chiku also has a Challenge section, where it gives you tasks on what you should do or what you can do for the first time on that day, and then jot down your experiences and thoughts regarding that particular challenge. Like many other options, this is also not an option. It also shares you a motivational quote at the start of each day, and you also have an option of sharing that quote through your social media accounts. ⁴

Lastly, Chiku also has its own community, where you can optionally share some of your entries with like-minded users. You can also read others’ shared posts and get inspired from them too. Because this is an app and gratitude journaling is meant to be private, you can’t really plug your Chiku account to anyone in public. If you want to start gratitude journaling and want to share everything you jotted down with the public, just start a niche-less (?) blog, such as the one I have right now. Personally for me, daily gratitude journaling should be something private and personal that you should keep to yourself.

I have been doing other well-being therapy methods before I started doing gratitude blogging using an app. Getting deeper and serious with art is definitely one of them and I’d like to keep going with this. Maybe I may do a side business of some sort using what I learned from the art courses I enrolled last year. ⁵

Conclusion

Another short blog, I know. Besides with what I’ve mentioned above, there really isn’t much going on with me, so not much to write about. I don’t have time to write opinions about today’s issues and normally, I’d keep those opinions to myself. After all, I’m just one person who blogs about whatever I wanted to blog about. I’m no influencer.😅

Till next time, maybe!

1. with new and re-discovering groups, of course
2. I only use the WP app to upload featured images/post header images for my planned post, since I use Spark Post to create my featured images quickly without waiting to get on my computer and launch Photoshop.
3. bullet journal – I’ll eventually build one, but it would look completely different and it may not end up being a “bullet journal” at all…
4. I share some of them on my Instagram.
5. Class 101 is such a good platform, I highly recommend it for those who’d like to take quality art courses. Domestika is really good as well!