Year in Review – Reflecting on Anime Blogging in 2019

As expected, I hoped that in 2019 things will finally turn around. As expected, I finally got my wish. Also, we will take a look back at the year in review. I know this is a bit early, but I still have two to three posts left before the year ends.

Last year, the job search was starting to take a toll on me with the lack of interviews. Well, since the start of the year, I got a good amount number of interviews. In fact, I did eight interviews in 2019 alone. While I got like 7 rejections, I managed to finally receive a job offer. Not one, but two from the same federal agency and the same promotion potential, one in which I didn’t interview for. I eventually settled one that is more convenient to commute to, which is in Washington, DC.

The funny thing is that I was going to do more training and earn more IT certifications to improve my chances. While I earned my Comptia Cybersecurity Analyst certification with a high score at the end of July, it was overkill. The position I selected for is still a database management position that I have experience in. However, it has some system administration work as well. Regardless, the skills I learnt from taking the certification is still going to be very useful.

With that, I sold my old house in Pennsylvania and will be moving to another house in the DC Metro area. I settled for a place in Montgomery County, Maryland. You can imagine, the last three months were hectic trying to pack everything up left sitting in the old house, storing it and looking for another townhouse to live in. Yes, that is a lot of driving and wasted weekends. It’s not until a few weeks ago I found one with a decent amount of space to live in for years to come.

As a result, I couldn’t focus on creating other content such as manga reviews and editorials. Still, it will be worth it with the future job opportunities since I can move up quicker and earn more money to spend on my hobbies (besides saving for the future). As expected, I need to cut back on some of the episodic reviews and only cover at most three series per season. In return, you will see more editorials and reviews. As they say, quality over quantity.

On the other hand, I do plan to invest some of my salary (besides advertisement income) to this blog. Renewing the WPTouch Pro subscription was the first step in doing this. I plan to finally commission some artwork with the mascot I came up with. This will be done sometime in the spring of next year. Still, I have to find someone who create anime-style art, come up with some proposed descriptions of what I want and go from there.

Either way, I’m not going on autopilot mode and posting mostly episodic reviews anymore. Sure, it’s nice to have the free time, but I need to make a decent living so I can enjoy life. My new full-time job will do this and there is good work and life balance as well.

This leaves the planned goals for next year since 2020 is going to be big! Here are some of my goals for next year:

• Finish my Manga and Video Game backlog – This year, I only finished like four titles (Watashi ni Tenshi ga Maiorita vol. 1, Comic Girls vol. 2, Ochikobore Fruit Tart vol. 1, and Magia Record vol. 1). I wanted to finish more, but I got sidetracked the second part of the year. Also, I haven’t completed any video games at all and my backlog on that continues to build. Maybe better luck next year, hopefully.
• Attending an Anime Convention – Now, since I live in the DC area, attending Otakon might be a possibility. It depends on my finances since I still need to recover from my big gap year, probably longer than Hiroe’s. Will I dress up/cosplay if I decide to go? You have to wait to find out about that if I decide to go.
• Involving myself more in the Blogosphere – I guess one of the reasons I am holding my blog back is not interacting with others as much. I used to interact others in the early year of blogging, but that went on the wayside. Will I make a resurgence? We’ll see.

But aside from that, I have a lot planned for 2020, but still in the works. Aside from that it’s amazing that I am still creating content as blogs don’t normally last this long. Either way, I want to keep it going for as long as I can.