Summer 2019 – It’s Time for a Change

Hi all, it’s been quiet here for a few weeks, hasn’t it? Without going too deeply into the gory details, my partner and I are currently undergoing IVF/ infertility treatment, and since I’m the one with more involved anatomy the medication has left me feeling really exhausted. Unfortunately, I get home from work feeling exhausted, and that leaves me with very little energy to indulge in my hobbies – including this blog. The down time has given me the opportunity to think things over a bit, and I suppose now is probably a good time to implement a few changes.

1. Regarding the remaining first impressions from this season – I don’t know if I’ll finish them or not. There have been a lot of great things airing this season and I feel a little bit guilty about not providing my personal input, but at this point many series are wrapping up and it feels a little silly to talk about first episodes when many people have already watched the final ones. It’s not like I haven’t been watching stuff, so I may come out with some kind of wrap-up or summary or something similar, but that will depend highly on my free time and energy (I’m getting close to finished with this round of medication and I anticipate there will be some down time after that, so hopefully I’ll feel a little bit more up to writing).
   
2. Going forward – I’d like to start switching stuff up a bit. Obviously I enjoy doing first impressions and surveying the anime landscape each season, so I don’t want to stop doing that. Instead of deep-dives into each series, though, I have been thinking about doing a few posts with shorter impressions on some of the series I’m not quite as interested in, and then writing a few “feature” impressions of the things I think are more worth talking about. These could be ones I really like, ones that misfire in interesting ways, or just episodes that provide a lot of food for thought. Part of what makes my current system really difficult sometimes is that I feel obligated to write at length about episodes that I just don’t have very strong feelings about, and that’s always really frustrating for me and wastes a lot of time.
   
3. I’d like to spend my energy writing more thoughtful pieces – digging into the details of certain anime series and writing more full-series reviews. Those are the types of things I find more satisfying to write about, but as soon as first impressions start falling behind my time to write these types of things is diminished quite a bit.

It remains to be seen how this will all end up playing out – I’ve got a surgery scheduled right around the start of the new anime season, so my ability to put into practice the things I’ve planned may be compromised somewhat (though on the other hand I’ll have a few days of free time with no obligations, so it might work out to my advantage). But hopefully the new direction will be a good refresh and re-focus for me. Thanks for reading!