The blank page syndrome creeps in...

The first page always feels like the hardest

Wow, this feels like a fresh page in my Hobonichi, except I can’t pull out stickers and slap on some washi tapes for borders to get me started. I do, however, feel the flutter and anticipation of starting a new project and imagining what it could blossom into in the future.

I love penguins, green, melon soda, and dangos. The monstera plant is still miraculously alive.

Growing up, I’ve always enjoyed writing. I’m the kid in class to take English Literature, creative writing, and even Chinese creative writing class after school for fun. I’ve saved countless short stories on floppy disks, scribbled original stories in blank notebooks during recess, and kept multiple diaries throughout the years of my childhood. Yet, as the digital world advanced throughout recent years, it’s as if my brain has regressed to short captions, emoji tap-backs, and Instagram stories with one-liners that lasted only 24 hours.

Digital platforms these days force everyone to consume shorter and shorter content through video and audio. However, I can’t help but stubbornly hold on to the power of long-form writing. I remembered why I loved reading blogs and the people behind them who shared their stories through weekly pieces of content. I followed their ups and downs and seemingly grew with them throughout my years of followership. The appeal and intention behind original writing separate us from AI. If I were to leave my legacy as a creator in this interconnected world, I don’t want it to be at the whim of any platform that could wipe out my content in seconds.

I’m glad I held on to the last thread of analog through creative journaling and motivated myself to write almost every day in my Hobonichi and other forms of notebooks. If Instagram ever took away my penguinscreative account, I still have the physical books that traced my creative journey. I can’t say that I’m especially eloquent on those pages. If you ever peek closely at my page, you’ll find that I started almost every entry with “Today, I woke up late again…

Anyhow, I thought I’d start sharing my stories beyond immaculate Instagram feeds and short videos. Honestly, I’m mostly inspired by my husband. He keeps a public “diary” on a car forum about his Porsche 997 GT3RS for the past two years, and I’m wildly jealous of his endeavor.

I was working on this spread in my TRAVELER’S notebook about a recent trip where I sketched on a boat with several other urban sketches.

Why is it called “The Penguin Post”? The idea of a newsletter/micro-blogging curated feed has been in my head for a long time. However, I just didn’t have the energy to revamp my old blog “penguinscreative.com” without breaking the format of all of my older posts. I also want to step outside of the box from “penguinscreative”, a name that honestly sounds like a marketing agency. On a brainstorming session on my Twitch stream the other night, this substack almost became “Emperor Penguin’s New Groove”, but let’s bank that fantastic name for some future project.

On The Penguin Post, I absolutely want to share more about my creative process, deep dive into the behind-the-scenes of my journaling spreads, new stationery items I’ve had my eyes on and why, as well as my urban sketching and art projects. I may also share glimpses of my upcoming travels with stationery objectives. Who knows? Maybe I’ll revive my watercolor Zoom sessions down the road.

Sometimes I might also just chat about my dog, Cookie, a golden doodle who loves to shred paper. Or sappy poetry.

So here I am. And thank you for following me here. If you had follow my adventures since the early Hobonichi days, I’d love to invite you to come along for the next chapter.

Finally, I’ll try to end most posts with a song I’ve been spamming lately. Think of it as Xanga where a song plays when you enter my page.

My musical genre preference is not varied. I really like K-pop, and I’m obsessed with New Jeans’ new song “Cool with You”.

Happy journaling!