A year of blogging

It’s been one year already since I’ve started this blog. The appropriate time to look back and what’s to come.

Time goes by ever so quickly. I tried to publish articles, keep up regular posting and engage with readers. Some posts were better than others, yet I wanted to create interesting articles for frequent and new readers. I was searching for formats, a visual identity and a writing style along the way.

I wanted to share some interesting facts that came by this year. Starting with the top 5 countries that visited my blog: The United States, Philippines, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia. Visitors from the US are most present, yet I get visitors from all over the globe.

The most popular posts I’ve written about are: ‘Angel Beats and the cry for a sequel’, ‘Flashforward: AnoHana movie‘ and ‘Kyoto Animation: animation does matter’. It is interesting to see that Angel Beats remains popular within the anime community, AnoHana doesn’t lose its charm over the course of time and Kyoto Animation still remains a benchmark studio.

I’ve written over a hundred articles and I’ve experimented a lot. I created categories to enhance navigation. I was looking for certain formats that I could use to give structure to my blog. Editorials remained, along the way I added reviews and other ‘series’ to keep the blog fresh. I want to create articles that will fancy everybody. You may like my reviews, others only read the editorials and so on.

I have some personal favorites among the articles. I’m especially proud of my Croisée review. I did some research into 19th century Paris and tried to mix it into a review. Comparing facts and the anime into a review. It was an interesting and educative experience.

I’m also proud of the ‘Blogspotlight’ series. I wanted to do something that would make my blog a bit more special and on the other hand create a more engaged anime community. I wanted for people within anime blogging to connect with each other. And I wanted to highlight the person behind the blog, putting them in a spotlight to tell the story behind their blog.

Readers and participators were positive about the ‘Blogspotlight’ posts and I am very grateful for those who were willing to answer my questions. Before then I was an entity that just created his own blog, yet I asked others to participate. I am again glad they saw time to work together.

At the beginning of my blogging career I tried to be as neutral as possible. I didn’t want to spark any negativity or come off as somebody with an arrogant attitude. Along the way I started to give my opinion a little bit more edge. This is my little site among many uncountable others, so it deserves a bit of my own flavor.

I followed blogs behind the scenes and only later on did I decide to also start my own little place on the internet. I love writing, I wrote several gaming reviews as a member on a gaming website and I wanted my own spot on the internet.

In early stages I started to notice that some of the blogs I followed, began to vanish. They stopped writing and moved on. I’m not sure if it’s a trend or just a natural occurence. I felt insecure, doubting what I had started and I was thinking of maybe halting my own activities. But the participation of readers, commenter’s and other bloggers motivated me to keep going.

I may not have the biggest amount of followers, but if you put them all together in real life, it’s still a large group. And I want to thank everybody who has subscribed and commented, it is an honor to know that people are willing to read what I write.

I don’t know what the future holds. I want to set forth what I’ve started for as long as possible. I want to discover more blogs and share them in the blogspotlight posts. I want to discover anime, write about anime and read about anime. Of course I also read manga occasionally and I remain fascinated with Japanese culture. Life is uncertain and events may change my way of living, but I don’t want to abandon this ship just yet!