Andrea's journal

Community is beautiful, rewarding, but not required. It is not necessarily needed to enjoy things with other people.


It's enjoyable, it can be. It's nice to know that you're not alone, and I agree with that. We are, at the end of the day, social creatures.


But ultimately, it is not required. Sometimes, there is a lot of value enjoying things in solitude. It's definitely not required to endure fan(on)s you disagree with, or drama you most likely didn't start. Just for the sake of community. This isn't necessarily what we mean when we say if you want to a village, be a villager, that if you desire community, you have to be inconvenienced. Some inconveniences aren't worth it. Communities don't have to feel like high school all over again. The internet shouldn't be treated like some safety blanket, nor should it only be your social circle or source of enjoyment.

Mute the chat. Leave the server if you want. Turn off push notifications. Block them. Or interact on your own terms. Touch grass. Tell them to get off your lawn.

I really don't mind being labelled a grinch for this.

Made a very fast artwork of my 2-year old character! She's a human Monk who has recently deconstructed from her religion and separated from the god that's attached to her by the hip. A physical manifestation of her deconstruction involves a removal of her spiritual Third Eye that allows her communication with her god and gives her special powers. I wanted to add a horror angle by making her spiritual third eye physical and bleeding with holy energy. There's also a selfish god with multiple eyes, so I added that on the background. I was very inspired by eyes in horror games like Detention （返校）which showcased a lot of background moving eyes in a Buddhist hell setting, and Elden Ring's Shabriri Grape, which are actual gouged eyes of cult followers.


She's gone through a lot of physical changes depending on the development arcs she goes through. The last time I drew her was 2024?
One of her very old artworks from 2024: My art style used to be very different 2 years ago, and they're very line-art based. I was slowly trying to understand how to render in general even while doing line-based art, and I was going through a slow transition away from this style. How I draw now in 2026 is now my ideal art style.

And it's banned because it's...well, classified as a gambling website. Nobody gives away much of their money to Tumblr, so that's weird.

So, it couldn't have been much of an issue to me because I want some time off Tumblr and social media art anyway. Tumblr to me is the hellsite Elon owns, but without a character limit and you could participate and yap your way into excessively online toxic discourse to your heart's content. It's not a safe space, and it hasn't been. But yeah, it's still a major place where I post my art. That's not the main point though, what's my main gripe right now is that the Philippine government is banning shit for the wrong reasons as usual.

VPN is so far the easiest solution to this. Others have told me that it does work. Maybe one day when I'll post art again lol.

One of the barely talked about things about working from home is the increased desire to get out of the house.

For context, the only time I've actually worked onsite is a part-time employment situation when I was in university, and that was hybrid. 99% of my employment experience has been fully remote and it has been that way ever since (It's largely because I've graduated the time the pandemic started). I've spent a large majority of my 20s spending daily life at home and this has been how I've been earning my money.

I don't think I wanna be in a job where it isn't fully remote, actually. There are far more advantages to working remotely, for me at least, and I see myself sticking with this opinion for a very long period of time. A big part of it is introversion, and I save more money this way. I've also addressed emergencies and errands far more effectively in this manner. A big big con to this is lack of exercise if you don't want to put your mind to it. But there is at one point where you just stay at home for far too long that you want to work somewhere else. I'm not sick of my home, either, in fact, I really love my living situation. I think this feeling gets amplified whenever work gets hectic, and you unfortunately associate stress with whatever spot you usually work in at home.

I've been thinking about the level of productivity I have when I go outside of the house (whether that's my design job or my after-work illustration) and I see that my productivity is better the more I switch up the place that I work. I think it's just I need variety and it somehow refreshes my mind? The only problem I have is that if I keep going outside, it'll be the fastest way I drain my savings lmfao. So I try for the most part to not just stick to my room for working even though I have a robust and comfortable work from home setup.

I think I have this opinion regardless of not whether I'm in the city or in my hometown, but I like doing this more in my hometown where the air quality is far better and the way the sky looks is mostly perfect hahaha

I've been thinking about this ever since, and especially finishing majority of a project in a coffee shop a few hours ago and going home accomplished.

I scrambled to look for a theme for this one. I miss old blogging again (Sorry, Tumblr, I don't mean you.) This seems nice :)

Hi, I'm Andrea. Designer by day, illustrator by night. I'm fluent in both English and Filipino, informing you just in case I suddenly post something in my language. I'm still wondering what I'm going to be posting here. Art? The process? Regular daily life things. Who knows. Knowing me this might be mostly a journaling/traditional blogging type thing.

Currently I'm mostly doing fan art for the things I'm interested in (Mostly Lucanis from DA:TV). For those already asking, I'm still wondering if I'm going to be opening up commissions. This really highly depends on my schedule and I feel in 2026 it's already hectic as it is having a full-time gig of my own, so. If I've found my groove, maybe I'll do it later this year. I'm so tired haha

Okay honestly I think I have nothing much to say after that lmao. I'll be linking my socials in a bit.