Subdued Fangirling's Fourth Anniversary!

I don't know what image to use, so have a sketch that Isayama drew of Levi with a Colossal Titan facemask

Guess who missed their blog anniversary again?

Four years though. That's not that long, and yet it feels like an eternity. That day when I decided to create this blog on a whim in-between episodes of a Fushigi Yuugi marathon seems very far away. Since then, I've graduated from that school with a BA, earned my Masters, and now I'm about to finish student teaching and hopefully move on to a career of teaching. However, my obsession with anime hasn't changed.

I haven't accomplished as much this year with the blog as I would've liked, mostly thanks to school eating up my schedule, but I still feel the same as when I wrote this last year:

...All this time I've been thinking, "I wish I had more than two spare minutes a day so that I could write more on the blog." I've still been getting ideas. I still have things I want to say. And that tells me that I'm in for the long haul, regardless of what real life throws at me.

At the time I'm writing this, I've got several editorial-style posts in the draft stage as well as the figure review I never got around to posting last...January? I think it was January. You know it's been a long time when you can remember the last time you made a post... I'm also thinking about reviving my Summer of Backlogging feature with a few tweaks, since there are a lot of shows on my backlist that I couldn't watch while they were airing this past year.

Also, the blog is going through a slight makeover yet again, as some of you may have already noticed due to the fact that the banner and the blog width don't match anymore. I'm planning on whipping up a new banner and finding a new background to match (I still really dislike Blogger's default tiling regardless of resolution). In the meantime, please pardon my mess!

As for what else has changed, I've gotten a lot more into cosplay over the last year with my first serious attempt at Anime Expo last July. I'm planning on bringing three cosplays with me this year, and I'll actually be there the whole four days for the first time! I've been posting pictures of my plans and progress over on my Instagram. There also might be some posts on the subject in the future, and I'm toying with the idea of even making some YouTube videos about that and my con adventures, but nothing's set in stone just yet.

I also finally joined the 2000s and got the blog a Facebook page, not just a Google+ page. There's not much on it right now, but I'm planning on not only sharing my blog posts but also anime-related news items that I find interesting (read: every piece of Attack on Titan news will probably cross that page at some point). You can find it here or through the widget on the sidebar.

So as usual, I have lots of plans, but whether things actually turn out that way remains to be seen! In the meantime, I'm still here, and I'm really looking forward to getting out of school (for real this time!) and getting back into my hobby.

And now, as is blog anniversary tradition, here are some stats!

Since I barely wrote anything this last year, everything is down in terms of month-to-month data, yet overall my pageviews are up 10k from last year... Somehow.

Meanwhile, my Blogger stats fell off a cliff yet again

In any case, here's hoping for a more productive year five!

Top image is an original sketch by Hajime Isayama posted to his blog here.