OMG OMG OMG!!!!!!

It’s my blog’s birthday!!!! woots!!! Can you believe it? I can’t! It’s a little hard to explain (or justify) how proud I am of keeping this place in existence for a year…. I’ve had a blast. I tend to get all mushy and sentimental with you guys at the flimsiest excuse so I’ll try to control myself this time, after all, there’ll be plenty of time for that in the future. 😁

I have been trying to come up with some way to mark the occasion for weeks. I’ve raided the archives of my seniors’ blogs to see how they handled it, tweeted questions, asked random strangers on the street and in the end, made a sort of mish mash of my favorites.

First I brought myself a present! What? It’s my birthday…. If you are not reading this in the reader app, you may have noticed that I’ve updated the blog’s appearance. I’ve also added a few plugins which I hope will be fun or at least functional for all of us. What you can’t just tell by looking, is that I’ve upgraded my plan to business. I essentially just did it but once I’ve had the chance to play around with it a bit, I’ll let you know my thoughts in a post. (If you are interested in any of the plugins I use, let me know, I’ll be happy to tell you which ones I have). Now that I’m all pretty and shiny, I’m ready to face my second year.

A lot of anniversary posts reflect back on the blog’s year and milestones. It’s a traditional way to mark off your accomplishments. So this is what I got:

In a year, I’ve posted at least once a day every single day. This means that I currently have 476 posts published totalling 569 192 words. I also have a total of 15 355 likes and my most treasured accomplishment by far 9 951 comments. I’m not sure how to appreciate these numbers but half a million words seems like a lot.

A little while ago Arthifis told me to name and tag my pics. Ok he told us all in this post here. Having over 400 posts already at the time, each with at least a handful of pictures, I’m afraid I never got around to tagging all of them but I did update quite a few. I’m not sure if this helped but my non WordPress traffic and Google referrals went up noticeably making June my best month in terms of views so far.

I somehow managed to get 1354 general followers, as I write this 951 wordpress followers. Amazingly one of my posts got 100 likes, this one!, while another got 118 comments, and oddly this one got over 1000 views…

Of course all know what stat really matters: search terms that lead to my blog. I plan to do another post going through those at the end of the year (we can compare with last year) but so far here are my favorites:

• an anime character with the same design as haruhi suzumiya but with glasses and is a magic user (precise!)
• grancrest war episode 9 worst show ever (opinionated!)
• steins gate 0 episode 11 everyone can replace me (sad yet haunting)
• everything wrong with uta no prince sama (nothing!)

think that’s enough stats for now… out of curiosity, are you guys interested in other people’s stats? I’m a stat nerd so I find these type of posts really cool but even as I write this I realize how dorky it sounds.

A few of you take your blog anniversaries as an excuse to give us (your readers) presents in the form of artistic endeavors. I’ve seen skits, artworks, listened to songs. I really appreciate when a blogger takes the time to do something special like that.

I did draw a logo for the blog, although that was mostly for me. I was unable to reach the artist of my old banner to licence it. I also wanted something personalized and haven’t found time to find someone to create it yet so I made a placeholder.

However, I did also create a little something to share with you guys. Some of you may remember that earlier this year, Sanrio Boys broke my brain and I started writing fictional episode reviews. In my version, the show was a dark psychological thriller, where innocent young man got swept up with as ruthless cult that ultimately destroyed him.

I loved writing those and it seems Shaddowcat enjoyed reading them. She came up with the absolutely brilliant idea of creating a trailer for my imaginary show and even offered to help! I had to jump on the idea.

So it’s with great pride (?) That I bring you Nefarious Sparkles:

Yes I’m not great at this but this is my first time ever doing any of these things (video editing, voice over ect…) and I had a blast making it so I wanted to share.

Finally I have a potentially ill thought out proposition for all of you dear readers. I want to offer my blog as a general platform. What does that mean? Well I would be happy to have contributors.

In essence this doesn’t change anything. I will continue to write and post as I always have but if anyone is interested in also posting on my blog they are welcome to do so.

For instance if you don’t have or want a blog of your own but have a post you want to share, or maybe you have an idea for an article but the format doesn’t fit your blog. You want to blog under a pen name. You would prefer posting only occasionally but want to do so on a blog that’s decently active, or want to diversify your audience a little. Then I would be happy to have your post on my blog.

For me, it’s a way to give my readers some variety and add some content without having to work for it so obvious win here!

As for the details: DM me and if it works out, I will give you contributor access. This means you have complete control over your own posts, including formatting and pictures. I don’t have to approve your posts or even see them beforehand unless you want me to for some reason. I also don’t have to agree. Want to shred a show I’ve already gushed about, go ahead. Want to present a thesis that’s in straight opposition with my generally liberal (somewhat libertine) views, as long as you’re not a jerk about it, knock yourself out. Want to say bad things about Natsume’s book of Friends,? Find another blog…

Why did I just feel a chill?? Listen, this may be a horrible idea that I will go back on in a few months. Or, even more likely, no one will be interested and we will never speak of this again. But I’ve been so lucky in my blogging experience so far that I can’t resist pushing it!

As for the future, I’ve always been very casual about this blog. I think it’s why I enjoy it so much. As such, I don’t have any particular goals I absolutely want to reach. I’d like to extend my social media presence… who just said that? I guess it’s time to kidnap…I mean adopt more orphans. Maybe I’ll sit down and figure out what SEO means. Not how to do/apply/cook it, just what the letters stand for. Or how about we all just chat about anime?

Well here we are friends! It’s been one heck of a year. I had a great time. Much better than I ever would have expected. And because I’m no dumb dumb, I know exactly who I owe it all to.

As always, Thank you for making the sucky days a bit more bearable and the fun days even better. I hope you continue to take such good care of me!