So I did some hands-on research and it turns out that getting covid sucks. Of course I just had to get sick right when I took a vacation. Of course that had to happen right before a convention. That’s just life conspiring against me. But I am healthy once more and ready to get back into the aniblogging business!
Welcome back to Behind the Scenes. Taking a 2-week break from publishing articles has been good for me. I got some fresh inspiration and plenty of articles in the works to keep us covered for some time. It was also interesting to observe what would happen to my traffic if I wasn’t keeping to my regular schedule. Somehow… Reasons to Anime did better than ever before. Huh…
Usually we average around 200 visitors per day, with peaks on Monday and Thursday when new content comes out. During my break, traffic climbed to over 400 visitors per day. This was largely driven by articles like The Golden Age of Isekai, Growing Out of Anime, and my newest piece on the Anime Encyclopedia. It’s clear to me that features with general themes like that—as opposed to specific articles about a single anime—have much more appeal and thus remain relevant for far longer. Since these are also more fun to write, I’ll be sure to make more of these in the future.
Sadly, traffic collapsed back down to normal numbers the day after I returned. I won’t claim to understand why or how, but I’ve already come to expect that sometimes the algorithm just likes to pull pranks like this. Not posting anything wasn’t a solution anyway. After all, I got so much stuff to talk about!
August is PACKED with all kinds of different anime goodness. We’ll be talking about a high quality iyashikei anime, I got a new visual novel review lined up, as well as some critical reviews for anime by much-beloved studios. There’ll be another big Recommendations article too—haven’t done one of those in a while. I even found some hentai that proved interesting enough to warrant a full review.
I am also working on a potential new project that will mainly revolve around gaming, movies, and TV. Right now we’re still discussing how feasible this project would be and how to finance it, but I hope to have more details for you all soon.
Meanwhile, my offline life has been busy. The new kitten has been growing steadily and now has permission to roam freely around the house. She is proving to be quite the rascal. Always settings up ambushes to “scare” us, running up and down the stairs, and messing with things she really shouldn’t. She has been particularly interested in our ferrets. For a while she tried to bully them when they were in their cage, but she has since learned (the hard way) that there are consequences for doing so.
We also had her checked out and she appears to be perfectly healthy, though (as we expected) too young to have been taken out of her nest. We got her vaccinated and chipped while we were at it, so we’re fairly confident that she’ll remain a permanent resident here.
My battle to lose weight is also going quite well. I am down almost 7 kilograms since I started and have been paying greater attention to what I eat. I use an app called Fitatu that lets me track what I eat and how many calories, fats, fiber, and carbohydrates I am permitted daily if I want to reach my goal. This has been educational for me. For example, I didn’t expect a small pack of walnuts to have as many calories and fats in it as three cheese sandwiches. I figured they’d be far healthier because it’s a product of nature and all that.
So far my weight loss strategy has been to always presume a worst case scenario. I set Fitatu up in such a way that it calculates my daily intake, assuming that I am entirely sedentary. I don’t let it add the calories I burn while walking or exercising back into my recommended intake either. At the same time, I always slightly overestimate everything I eat. If I make a simple burger for dinner, I list that as the fattest Big Mac they got in their database. If I make cornflakes, I guesstimate that my portion sizes are about 1.2x what the app recommends. And while doing so, I still strife to always undershoot my goal.
That sounds extreme, but I don’t feel hungry as a result of these choices. I found healthier alternatives to what I’d usually eat, so I don’t have to skip lunches or ration anything. I did dial back my alcohol use somewhat, but I still drink freely whenever I have friends over or when I’m partaking in anime groupwatches.
I also got to see Queen + Adam Lambert again! I have listened to Queen all my life, so I take every opportunity I can get to attend their concerts. Getting to see legends like Brian May and Royer Taylor in person is a spectacular experience; streaming it from Spotify or watching old recordings on YouTube simply can’t compare. I have also been warming up to Adam Lambert since first seeing him perform some years back. I love his flashy showmanship. He puts so much energy into his performances and is constantly dashing all over the stage. It makes me wonder how it doesn’t seem to tire him out at all.
That’ll be all for me today, though. I’ll see you all again in the next Behind the Scenes post, assuming that I haven’t been killed by outraged fans by then.
