Hello, Everyone!
The Anime Almanac was doing very well for itself seven years ago. I had a great following on Twitter that kept growing and growing. I was also receiving boxes from FUNimation and manga publishers every week filled with the latest releases to review on the site. But the part that meant the most to me was attending anime conventions with press credentials. With those credentials, I was given the opportunity to sit down with artists, actors, musicians, and industry folks and tell their stories to my audience. I had a blast doing it.
But we were also deep into the recession at that time, and while I had laughed it off in the first couple of years, could see in 2010 that things were not going so well with my day job. The fear and pressure of losing my job weighed heavily on me, and it prevented me from writing. Convention reports and reviews kept piling on my “To Do” list, but never getting done. I had entire interviews with guests recorded on my iPhone that never saw one word written about them.
And then it came crashing down at the start of 2011. I was laid off from my job and forced to look for something new. I was afraid of the blog becoming an issue with potential employers, so I had taken it down completely. I had to email my PR contacts in the industry to ask them to please stop sending the review copies.
The Anime Almanac was closed.
So what has happened since then?
Well, things got a lot better.
I found a new job after three months of looking and my career skyrocketed at a crazy pace. I found a niche that worked well for me. I even got to write the occasional blog post for my companies over the years.
I met a girl and we spent six years together before getting married last September. We go to conventions together every summer and spent our honeymoon in Japan. That is the both of us pictured above in Akihabara. We now own a house with three cats.
And the Anime Almanac came back online, albeit rather quietly. With the exception of a quick editorial and one report of Otakon written by both my wife and me, it has not been updated. My Twitter feed has also been quiet, but it still maintains over 9,000 followers and gets more added each day.
But now that my life is settled, I have found my longing for the old days of the blog coming back. I started getting deep into particular series that have flown under my radar in recent years. I am back to buying figures and manga series. I even started following the ani-twitter community again.
Oh, and I dyed my hair blue. I guess I kind of resemble my blog’s avatar now – except for the whole cat and girl part.
So it only took a little prod from the Otaku Journalist to get me going again:
y u no blog anymore =(
— Laurenai Circulation (@laureninspace) July 1, 2017
Yeah, I really should start this up again. Let’s get back to blogging.
