Happy New Year!

Hey all, I hope everyone had a satisfying end to their year and are at least trying to be ready for whatever unpredictable nonsense that 2024 is likely to throw their way.

Normally I’d want to take after Anime News Network and most of the other blogs that I follow and put together some sort of “year in review,” but the honest truth is that, after about April/May I didn’t watch very much anime at all. I had all these notions that, while on maternity leave I’d have nothing but time to sit in front of a TV with my husband and baby and binge watch shows, but with the lack of normalized sleep, each day flowed into the next and all I had the mental energy for was to keep a constant stream of Seinfeld episodes running in the background. I have since become somewhat insufferable in my use of Seinfeld references in everyday life, but I was always a little insufferable anyway.

I don’t typically like to make formal “resolutions” because I feel like the formality runs contrary to my issues with executive dysfunction and I only end up disappointing myself. The last “goal” I set for myself was to send in at least 1 essay pitch to one of the “big” anime websites I follow (the goal wasn’t even to have one accepted, just to pitch something). Then I went and got all involved with fertility treatment which ended up completely sapping my energy to do anything and I ended up not following through. So I’ve set that as a background goal for sometime in the near future – I have a couple of ideas that have been simmering for perspectives I haven’t seen much of in the anime sphere, so the desire is still there, I’m just now involved in being a parent and still getting my legs back underneath me so carving out that time needs to be more purposeful. I don’t want to propose something and then not be able to follow through.

My other long-term idea is to put together something of a history of local anime organizations and clubs (for those who don’t know, I live in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, in the US). It’s been an interest of mine for a long time, because I’ve belonged to an anime club for close to 22 years now and also volunteered for a local anime convention for what feels like nearly as long (it’s been at least 15 years). Anime fandom is what I believe to be my life’s one true fandom and someplace where I feel like I’m home, so to learn more about my predecessors and share stories would be a real pleasure to me. I don’t know what format that would be – a series of blog posts, a book, maybe interviews – but it’s something I’ve been kicking around for a while and would love to get off the ground somehow.

But honestly, the only concrete, “have to get it done” goal for the upcoming few months is to just watch more anime. Something that’s been front-of-mind for me lately is the relatively new (I believe) concept of “matrescence,” the process by which one becomes a mother (though I don’t particularly want to use gendered language, it seems to be focused on the birthing parent). Much like adolescence, which causes lots of changes in the body as well as the mind, matrescence is the process of bodily and mental changes that come from the process of gestation, birth, and parenting. It’s thought that the mental changes (often derisively referred to as “mommy” brain) are the result of neural efficiencies that come from this process. Whether this is true or not, what I’m finding is that my focus on certain things is much sharper and I have a really difficult time sitting still if there’s something that needs to get done (chores like laundry or the dishes). It’s also affected my ability to focus on new media for any length of time, which is why my brain seemed to find such comfort with Seinfeld or King of the Hill playing in the background, but couldn’t focus on new anime that I tried to watch.

I’ve actually found it much easier to switch gears while at work, because much of what I do doesn’t require a lot of immediacy and I have a time period in the day that I reserve for a lunch break, so the goal I’ve set is to watch at least 1 episode of some anime per day, which I’ve been able to do so far (I’m attempting to finish up the second half of The Witch from Mercury at the moment). I also managed to watch the last “episode” of Attack on Titan when it was released, because there was no way in heck after nearly a decade of interacting with that series that I was going to sleep on its finale. I have thoughts on it that I might try to write about at some point – in short, I know why the ending was controversial, and I know why the show as a whole was controversial, but I loved it anyway.

There have been many times I’ve put my writing on pause and taken breaks from watching anime, and yet I keep coming back again and again. It’s not due to any one factor, but many; I love the fandom, I love my fellow bloggers, and I love the material itself. I wouldn’t be the person I am without it. I never leave for long.

Oh, and while I have a list of series I plan to catch up on based on what I know about my own likes/dislikes and interests, if anyone has seen anything they particularly enjoyed over the past year or so that hasn’t gotten enough “press” or you believe is misrepresented by other reviews or its own marketing, feel free to let me know and I’ll be sure to make time for it.