Author Journey (January 24, 2022)
Three weeks late, but I’m about to begin 2022 for real now! That’s right, while you’ve all been pushing on with your New Year goals, I’ve been coasting through a relentless schedule that has occupied almost every waking moment…
January 24, 2022
Hot Topic
Out of sheer curiosity, I activated the sleep tracking function on my phone, which pretty much confirmed what I already knew – I don’t get a lot of sleep. My eldest son returned to in-person school on Tuesday after a snowstorm put Monday’s return on hold. We had over fifty centimetres of snowfall that day. So, Tuesday to Thursday was in-person school and Friday was a teacher training day… That meant I had three days with just my youngest son. It was easier, but still impossible to do the day job during the day. When it moves to the night shift, my quiet time (essential for an introvert like me) gets dropped.
Even then, trying to squeeze an eight-hour workday into the evening is tough. The kids go to sleep between eight and ten. While they are falling asleep, I hit the road with Gus whatever the weather. We were out in minus twenty-seven celsius the other night… When I get home, I start the day job, usually around ten and work until two in the morning at the earliest. My average time in bed for the week was four hours and thirty-seven minutes. Anyhow, the nanny should start today and I can go back to working during the day.
What have I been watching?
Seasonal Anime
As you would imagine, my time has been limited although I managed to squeeze in each of my seasonal shows. I am looking forward to being able to catch up on some of last season’s shows and several from this season that I haven’t had a chance to get around to. Basically, time has been tight and I’ve had to prioritise the shows I’m covering, which is fine.
I say fine, but I’m having a better time than that. Princess Connect! Re: Dive had an excellent second episode and is definitely my favourite show I’m covering. In the Land of Leadale has been good so far too, although I do hope there will be some sort of direction. It’s fun but it feels like it wants to go somewhere but can’t quite commit to it yet. And then there’s Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest. I had incredibly low expectations for this series and am probably watching it more out of morbid curiosity than anything else. Well, I’m glad to report that it has been better than I expected. It’s not good, but I’ll take that for now.
Historic Anime
There was some exciting news in this section for last week. The week before saw the end of season one of Jujutsu Kaisen. It was always going to be a tough show to follow, so I decided I would bring in the big guns. Because of life and travelling, I have a bit of a blank spot in my anime watching and there are several big-name shows that I haven’t seen. Well, it’s time to rectify one of those. That’s right, I started Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood which has sixty-four episodes. That should keep me busy for a while!
Season two of Fire Force has been quite surprising so far. I thought I was going to enjoy it, but it’s been great so far. Then, there are my new posts about That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. Have you checked them out yet? I’m covering four episodes at a time and then talking about a concept that caught my attention.
And just like that, Hundred reaches episode ten. I’m not even sure how that happened, it feels like I just started. Anyhow, that means there are two more episode reviews and a season review before I jump into yet another series. It always feels good completing a series of posts even if it’s often sad finishing a show, especially one with no second season.
Work in Progress
I have no update on my current projects, which is probably not a huge surprise. I’m looking forward to next week when I can go on and on about all the writing I did… fingers crossed. So instead, I’m going to mention something that I’m thinking of introducing to this site. Last week, I posted a bonus post on Friday. I hadn’t planned on doing it until I saw Crow’s post over on Crow’s World of Anime about fan service.
Well, when Ecchi Hunter went down back in September, I spent a couple of weeks trying to recover all of the text. It took a while, but I was able to get everything but three posts. One of the posts I saved was a piece I wrote about whether fan service was necessary. Now, this was for a site called Ecchi Hunter so I think you can imagine my angle.
Anyhow, after reading Crow’s post I felt inspired enough to rewrite that post and republish it here. I think it was pretty well received and has made me think that maybe I should introduce a monthly opinion piece to my schedule. That should give me plenty of time to find a topic to talk about. It’s always fun when you get to discuss the post in the comments so the more I can foster that sort of engagement the better.
Another thing that I thought I should bring up is that there are two posts sitting at the top of last week’s stats that I was not expecting to be there. The first and most successful post was Shironeko Project: Zero Chronicle (Episode 1) – The Land Protected by Light. I am baffled by this post’s sudden resurgence. In fact, it has had more views in the last week than the two prior years put together. The second is my short story – Isekai of the Dead. Both of these posts had been pretty much dormant, but it’s nice to get a boost every now and then, even if I can’t work out why.
The Plan
Last week I accomplished pretty much the same as I had the week before, which is great. As long as I keep moving forward, I’ll be happy. I’m hoping to see some progress this coming week at last. I mentioned last week that I would look to start releasing my first book as a web novel and my goal is to start that by the end of the quarter. I also have some work to do on next quarter’s historic anime. It’s good having a buffer, but I don’t want to let it completely disappear. Plus, I just want to watch more anime too.
Quarter One
- Posts
- Author Journey – 4/13 (+1)
- Historic Anime – 39/39
- Seasonal Anime – 7/36 (+3)
- Bonus Posts – 12/17 (+1)
I’m going to have a look through some of the other posts that I salvaged from Ecchi Hunter and may bring some back to life here. There’s no point defending fan service if I’m not prepared to talk about it. Well, watch and talk about it more.
- Writing
- Plotting – 49/58
- Writing – 43/58
- Editing – 42/58
- Artwork – 0/9
Again, there’s no change to the writing and artwork although I have been planning out several of my covers and internal images. If they come out as nice as they are in my head, they should work nicely. I’m excited to be writing and drawing again. There’s something very relaxing about the process.
Final Thoughts
So, I’ve had limited sleep for the last couple of weeks and I can already feel it impacting me. It’s hard to believe that I did this for almost nine months back at the beginning of the pandemic. Admittedly, I could have taken a break but in all honesty, I would be far more cranky without the release I get from watching anime and talking about it. I think I would have completely lost my mind, so for now, I will survive on what little sleep I can manage. Providing everything goes well this week, I can see it starting to naturally correct itself.
I’m just itching to get back to working on my fiction. Keep your fingers crossed that I can. Anyhow, thanks for reading and stay safe.
