I got so preoccupied with all these 11.11 sale events that I didn’t realize that it’s also this blog’s 11th anniversary!

Time really flies and everything changes. I could say that it is a totally different world now than when this site started. For starters, there was no social media back then so the “blogosphere” was your go-to for reviews and information. These days, blogs are probably for those who still like to read longer stories. It seems like people these days have such a short attention span that they can’t read more than the headlines and comments!

The development in the past years though have been quite beneficial for content creators such as myself (well, everyone’s technically a “content creator” these days if you share original materials on social media) in a way that I no longer needed to have a separate camera or a laptop just to create new content. All I need is a phone and a decent internet connection and I can create a blog post. In fact, I created this post just using my phone! Unfortunately though, social media is much more intoxicating—you get instant gratification with all these likes and comments that can easily flood your feed. With real life challenges, toxic work schedules, and social media all vying for my limited time, this blog had gone sedentary, with only these announcements from our partners in the running and sports community keeping it afloat from time to time.

So what have I been up to for the past year? Topping my list would be work. From the onset, this site has never been for profit so it always just take whatever spare time I have. This year, work has been more intrusive with my personal time. It is a challenge when you take ownership of your work that you’re willing to work past midnight, early morning, more than 12 hours straight, or even overnight just to ensure it succeeds. I’ve always thought of myself as a fast and “smart” worker, but you can only do so much in a day as a single person.

The next item on my list is my newly turned-over condo. Who knew that a condo from a “highly-reputable” developer could be so problematic? For the past 10 months, I’ve been constantly dealing with defects and as of now, all my complaints have yet to be resolved! It’s like the one-year warranty they offer is barely enough for them to fix all my to-fix list! We had to work around those defects when doing our renovations so it’s really a challenge. Not to mention the enormous amount of time it took for me to get a reputable contractor that offered a reasonable charge for my project.

Motivation is something that I struggled to find this past year. If you’re constantly tired daily, it’s hard to find energy to do more—all I wanted was just to sleep and watch Netflix. Unless something is already ready for posting (like announcements from our partners), I would not be able to post anything. I simply can’t gather enough energy or motivation to write! And so I now have a lot of things that I wasn’t able to post like my trip to the US East Coast, a bunch of shoe reviews, etc.

The rest of 2019 should be “grounded” as well as I’ve no planned vacation trips anywhere. Most of my vacation leaves are still intact and those that were used were actually spent for my condo renovations. Pretty boring, I could say. On the up side though, the concept of a “staycation” has been totally flushed from my system as we have a decent pool in our condo and some nice green space to just relax. That is, if I can find time!

If you’ve made it this far, thank you! I wrote this as the words come streaming out of my mind, typing on my phone before the thoughts get lost. I do hope that I can start crawling back from this slump and get back into doing at least a weekly post for the few folks that are still curious about what I’m up to. Shout-out to all you folks for still keeping me in you radar! Thank you for the support! I really appreciate it!

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