Hi everyone, I hope the last couple of weeks have been pleasant for you. I feel as though I blinked once and a bunch of time had passed since I last posted. I figured another update was in order.
I’ve been very busy with my day job the past several weeks. Now that the pandemic is “over” (it’s not, but you know how people are behaving), I’m helping my office catch up on some in-person work that was put on hold for two years. This has meant doing a lot of traveling and going on-site to various offices, which takes a lot of time an energy. When I’m not traveling to perform audits, I’m at work preparing for our site to be audited (a normal annual occurrence). It’s fulfilling work, but it takes a lot of energy to do well.
The short of it is that I just haven’t had much time for writing. When I write about anime, I like to have a clear mind free of other distractions, and that’s been in really short supply for me lately. I’m disappointed, because this has been a big anime season full of a ton of interesting anime series, and I just haven’t had much to say about them – that includes the first impression reviews that I like to consider my “calling card” of sorts. At this point in the Spring season, when it’s 75 or 80% complete, I’m not finding myself especially interested in doing write-ups of first episodes (though I might do some summary posts at some point, since I can be kind of a completionist).
I’ve noticed that this time of year tends to fall at a low point in my creative cycle. For whatever reason, it tends to be when I start getting in my own head about my writing abilities and my reasons for continuing to blog about anime. I generally come out the other side feeling a little more refreshed and determined, and this time I can once again feel myself turning the corner, albeit slowly. Now it’s more a matter of clawing back some of my free time so that I can do some anime-watching and analysis that I consider up to the level of quality I prefer.
I hope everyone reading has been watching a lot of good anime (or at least anime that they’ve been enjoying – I’ve been known to enjoy some not-so-great anime from time-to-time). I hope we’ll get the chance to talk about it more soon!
3 replies on “Brief Update… Part 2”
Yeah, I’ve had a lull in the creative space lately as well. It probably doesn’t help that I’m going line by line through spreadsheets all day at work right now. I signed up for the panel about diverse representation in anime at Convergence so I am starting some research and compiling a source list for it. Outside of Golden Kamuy, I’m struggling to find an half-decent examples for indigenous folks.
It has been a good season for shows though. I know my general tastes are different than the norm, since SpyXFamily doesn’t make my top five of the season, despite enjoying it quite a bit, and from I can tell it is blowing the collective anime consciousness’ mind.
I’ll probably see you at Convergence. I didn’t sign up for any panels this time – I think I do better when I can be in charge of the scope and content, which isn’t always the case with their format. I’m also still working back up toward my previous convention participation level after being out of practice for a while.
That’s fair, I think having creative control over it is definitely highly desirable, and not not necessarily available with how Convergence generally works.
I didn’t really plan to be on the panel originally. There was a chance it was going to be cut from a lack of panelists, and I feel like it’d be a shame for it to be dropped, since there is a lot going on with it. To be honest, I’m still a little leery of the big people spaces like conventions because of how lackadaisical, folks are being in public regarding masks and such. I feel like there is a lot of tension between my desire to participate and my desire to have better public health.