I feel like I owe people an explanation after shutting down my blog so quickly…

Okay, I’ve been stuck on what to say for the better part of a month now, so I’ll get that out of the way:

TL;DR: I have decided to put the blog on hiatus.

Sorry to make this post come true, but it just had to happen. This is for a variety of reasons:

• First of all, I have 70 drafts and a list of topics I’d like to tackle someday, so I’m not stuck for stuff to write, should the desire arise. It’s that none of the drafts I’ve done since the February hiatus seem to come together in a way that I’d like, as much as the previous posts did (not to mention I tried applying to write for Crunchyroll when Rhyme Anima+ and Paradox Live were airing some months ago, so I have ideas specifically centred those two)…Then again, in my head, I’m still holding myself to an imaginary standard of at least 600 words per post, which is a rough average of my worst output (about 300 words per post) and my best output (over 1000 words per post).
• Engagement is kinda piddly at the moment and zero at the worst. I don’t know if it’s something wrong with the site redirect, the fact the links stuffed up after I changed them to be SEO-friendly or simply people not finding this blog despite having a monthly email newsletter and shilling it really hard (maybe all of thse reasons…?), but it feels like I’m yelling into the void when I already have other more private venting methods set up.
• It seems like no one engages with my translations if I put them on this blog, even though I put a lot of thought and effort into them (yes, even if they turn out to be an absolute mess when compared to someone else’s version of the translation). Currently, my confidence in my translation skill is waning again, which doesn’t help the JLPT much – I haven’t touched the Shin Kanzen Master books since discovering I failed the N2 a second time, partially out of light novel work (see below) and partially because I’m focussing on Anki as of writing this.
• My paid hosting will expire in a few months. It doesn’t seem like all the money I threw at this blog paid off either, so after the one scheduled post in 2 weeks (again, as of the time of writing) or so, I might just have to shuffle back to WordPress.com, let my redirect expire and cancel Bluehost so that I can still post up those Fairy Ranmaru posts (yes, I still want to work on them after the light novel stuff, even though they never seem to get done…). How I will handle this will depend on what works, but options are 1) back up WordPress.org and then let paid hosting go, 2) back up my blog and move what I can back to WordPress.com or 3) move relevant content back to Tumblr and nuke the rest.
• The light novel stuff is still going. As of the time of writing, I’m not sure if I’m doing volume 3 anymore so I can’t talk about it (<- just to be clear, that’s the one under NDA – volume 2 is not, hence the blog post). Volume 2 still has feedback to field at this point, albeit I’ve been chipping away at it for months now and it’s snatching a lot of my mental capacity. It might not sound like a lot, but I’ve said it before – translation is a series of choices. When you have the original draft, the draft that’s been submitted and any subsequent revisions, that’s 3 or 4 different versions to keep straight in my head at once, plus all the vocab I could’ve deviated on, plus any other important information. (For example, there was a side character name which I completely forgot about while working on the draft, so I interpreted that name as “a sacred person” due to Googling it and getting a mountain instead…oops…)
• Since January, I’ve been watching the Amazing Race (US) season 5 weekly instead of catching up with anime simulcasts. (Why season 5? That’s – according to majority consensus – one of the more beloved seasons and it includes the iconic “My ox is broken!” line.) This was originally in anticipation for the then-upcoming season 36, but now season 36 has begun and now I get to watch episodes within 12 hours of their original airing (there was a week delay between the original airings of season 35 episodes and me watching them), so between checking out fan opinions of seasons 5 and 36 and actually watching the episodes, that sucks up some of my remaining mental capacity.
• The previous point also suggests it was a combination of keeping myself on a schedule (with my anime club’s meetups) and lack of burnout that kept me going with anime simulcasts for 5 years. You could say me going cold turkey on anime, aside from a few Spy x Family episodes I watched about a week ago and some about 2 months ago (as of the time of writing), is the result of being on the hamster wheel for so long and then falling off. It’s to the point where I’m not even motivated to write a seasonal hype post anymore, since for several seasons running, it’s been a chore to do so. (Again, it’s not anyone’s or anything’s fault – I’m still hyped for a few anime and manga – most of them being adaptions of manga I’ve consumed bits of, like Blue Exorcist‘s Illuminati arc, Kaiju No. 8, ‘Tis Time for Torture, Princess and Dandadan – but simply not prioritising them.)
• I still intend to engage with the community every so often, so I don’t see my WordPress.com account being deleted just yet. However, I do see myself killing off ConvertKit in the near future, because that doesn’t have a wide audience either (only 4 at the most).
• The rest of my mental capacity is taken by…stuff. Mundane daily/family stuff, ARB grinding, book reading which is not manga or preparation for the future (that cousin’s overseas wedding, Live Anima…).

Upon retrospect, I’m amazed I kept going this long…

So, as a quick summary:

• I will explore some options so I can still put out the Fairy Ranmaru posts. I may move back to WordPress.com as a result.
• I’ve given up on monetisation because engagement is low.
• I will probably kill off ConvertKit in the near future.
• I’m still watching anime and reading manga, but at a much smaller capacity than I used to.

However, this is otherwise…pretty much goodbye.