Hello everyone, I wanted to check in about my current health, writing progress and just life in general. This blog is about me, after all, and sometimes you’ll find me rambling about my life just to get my thoughts on paper. For those of you who were looking forward to my review of Spice & Wolf volume 6, that will be coming in the near future, once I’ve actually read the entire volume. I know, I know, shame on me. Anyway, time for a life update.
Let’s start with health. I’ve recently done a lot of looking back on the past two years. Ever since covid first started, both my mental health and, as a result of this, my physical health have plummeted. I’ve been open about this on my blog for the most part and although I’m currently dealing with an issue as well, I do feel improvement in the near future. It’s been up and down lately but I’m optimistic, albeit it carefully. I will say that compared to a month ago, and definitely compared to a year ago, I’m feeling a lot better. That brings me to my second thing I wanted to talk about right now.
I have my things in order. I know, crazy right? Basically, this past year has been a bit of a mess for me. I started working extra hours at the mail, which was my saving grace financially, but it’s been difficult with how chaotic and inexperienced the planning department is. I’ve had more phone calls with them in the past six month than in the seven years leading up to it. Thinking about it, it’s not even close. But in a bit over a month from now I’ll go back to only delivering mail on Saturdays because I’m going back to teaching. The main issue financially was my worry that I’d have to get an internship far away due to the limited availability of nearby internship schools. To be precise, I could only find one school nearby that is accepted for internships by my university. Needless to say I applied quickly and to my surprise I was hired. Not only that, I’m even getting paid a little bit. Not a lot, but the combination of some pay with the incredible amount I’ll save on public transport does change my financial situation from rough to pretty good. I’ve saved up a lot for the worst case scenario and now that the worst case scenario isn’t happening, I can finally spend some of that money on manga.
On top of that, I have everything sorted for my final few semesters at uni as well. This took more effort than I would have liked, but things seem to finally be completely in order. If all goes well I can graduate early 2024, can you believe that? I’ll actually be a teacher by then and can start earning some actual money.
Finally, I wanted to talk a little bit about writing, this blog and my plans for it in general. You see, throughout all of my health problems the one constant I’ve been trying really hard to protect has been my writing progress. As you’re all well aware, my weekly story Hesitant Hero is still going strong and actually nearing the conclusion of its first volume. I’ve also written 1000 words a day every day of this year, and I hope to keep this up a little while longer.
On top of that, I’ve been thinking some more about what I want this blog to be. I changed to three posts a week which has been good, but I feel like I can do more if I set my mind to it. I’m currently working on writing a bunch of posts ahead of time, to see if I can get a bit of a bank going of back-up posts. A more regular upload schedule means I get to do more practicing and hopefully I can start reaching a bit of a bigger audience. As much as I love stories and will continue writing them, it’s very hard to post those consistently. It’s a lot more work to write a chapter of a novel or a short story than it is to write a post about an anime topic. I don’t have to explain why that is.
My current plan is to keep going as I have been and start posting some extra here and there. I’ve been considering talking about a show week by week again, and might do so in the upcoming season. I haven’t decided on what shows this could be yet, but I’ll be open to suggestions.
And that’s really all for today’s update. Spice & Wolf review is in the works, more anime content soon hopefully, and I’m thinking of some other ideas at well that I’ll keep to myself so as not to make false promises. Also please look forward to the conclusion of Hesitant Hero that should be here in either late August or early September at this rate. That would mean I’ve finished writing the entire first novel just before I turn 30. I’d be pretty happy with that, since that has long been a goal of mine that seemed to be near impossible after a while until I came up with this story. For the few of you wondering, The Necromancer’s Daughter will make a return eventually, but it’ll likely not be for a few months. I’m rewriting some of it and changing the structure because it wasn’t heading in the right direction. That sucks to admit, but it is what it is. I’m still learning every day and with the amount of practice I’m getting in lately I do feel like I’m steadily improving. And if you want a little sneak peek into the rest of this week;
On Friday I’ll have another chapter of the Hesitant Hero, as usual, and on Wednesday I’ll be returning to my quick reviews series. I’ll be talking about some sequel shows that aired this past season, so look forward to that!
Thanks for sticking by this blog and reading this. I hope to see you here again soon.
Opal Kaharis 