12 Days of Anime (2012) – Day 6 – 2 Year Anniversary and Lessons from Anime Blogging

December 20, 2012 marks the second anniversary of Avvesione’s Anime Blog.  Over the course of these two years, I have done more than just write about anime here; rather, it’s a clumsy combination of critiquing, evaluating, and reflecting upon various aspects of various anime presented in the form of words accompanied by unrelated but cute or amusing screenshots.  As a result of this blogging experience, I have learned an exceptional amount about how to properly articulate my assessment and perception of anime as I discover what it is about these shows that I like and dislike.  It has been a tremendous experience in improving my understanding and appreciation for anime.  However, not every aspect of blogging is marvelous or even significant.  Sometimes it’s frustrating or taxing, inconvenient or annoying.  But learning to deal with these negativities is one area where I felt myself grow as an anime blogger in 2012.

Of the number of problems that occur with blogging, perhaps my most challenging or the most apparent is the issue of timing and time management.  As the year has progressed, posts have been progressively arriving later and later, with episodic posts coming out sometimes a week after an episode has aired or seasonal reviews being placed in the middle of the following season.  Although there are several contributing reasons and it is depending upon other schedules, it is a trend I aimed to correct only to see it steadily decline as the year rolled along.  It’s embarrassing.  However, one aspect of dealing with this problem is learning to accept it and to do what I can when I can.  Knowing that there might always be a timing issue is something I’ve grown to accept but not something that I have to live with or something that cannot improve. There are a few ideas for which I can implement and experiment with in order to address this problem and see if it improves the timing of posts (though I don’t imagine that it will disappear completely).  It’s something worth trying and, if it helps, I might consider applying it to a majority of posts in the future.  Still, the issue with timing and time management in regards to watching and writing (and reading!) about anime is still annoying and a challenge for everyone.

Another negative characteristic associated with blogging is wanting to write something meaningful or valuable but struggling to develop the ideas or communicate it effectively.  The purpose of my blog is to cover a diverse variety of aspects and elements of each anime every week, either by focusing on overlooked or underappreciated themes, elaborating on subjects or characters, justifying significance in regards to the mechanics, or highlighting questions or observations that are either bemusing or amusing.  I wanted every post to be something interesting, to be something worth reading, to be something that’d make people come to my blog rather than all the other better blogs out there, which is why I’ve tried to stay away from opinionated posts and episodic reviews (there are many other blogs out there that do that much, much better than I could ever possibly hope for).  Still, by restricting myself to such a theme for my blog has been challenging time and time again, especially when I find myself disinterested in the anime or if I feel like I’m echoing previous posts without providing any insight or interest in the topic.  One method to deal with this problem has been to take more time with each post, which obviously plays into the first point, but it allows my mind to wander and to select the topic that I feel is the most interesting or intriguing to write about.  Another approach to this problem will be to understand how other people formulate their ideas and their posts which is a project I want to assume following these 12 Days posts and the holiday season.  Perhaps this will help provide answers to these two problems I am facing with my blog today.  If not, there’s always time to work these out over the following year, too.

And although the subject of this anniversary post is geared toward the issues that developed over 2012 in regards to running this anime blog, I still love it and enjoy what I do.  These problems are a reflection more of how much time and energy I want to put into this blog to make it improve rather than issues with running the blog itself.  I imagine that everyone who loves their anime blogs faces the same or similar issues themselves and are looking for ways to address or solve these issues.  I will attempt to coordinate a project to help anime bloggers and other writers with this issue soon, so expect a follow-up to this post in the next month or so.  As for now, I suppose all I can do is continue to watch, write, and enjoy anime for another year!