5th Blogiversary Reflections and Ambitions for 2021

Hello everyone! Welcome to another year of Mechanical Anime Reviews. I’m glad that so many people have joined the ride and continue to enjoy it for reasons. For the 5th year writing this style of post, are you sure that you aren’t lost and looking for someone else? If you aren’t looking for someone else, thank you so much! This year has been great for this blog and I excited to share how in a little bit.

In general, this year has been plagued by being an election year, people fighting and protesting their rights that they should have, and a pandemic that should keep people inside or wearing masks, but that isn’t the case. In a lot of ways, and this may or may not be privilege, my year hasn’t changed that much from 2019 to 2020 for a lot of reasons. I still do a lot of the same things, except some of my activities have been locked down. My community band has been shut down, which was frustrating and my church has limited assigned seating and makes sure people wear masks and people are in different groups and stay 6 feet away from each other. Other than that, and wearing a mask all the time, not much has changed for me in terms of me going in or out. Maybe this shows how detached I am from people in general sadly. So being locked in hasn’t changed who I am a lot, just how tired I am sometimes.

But, this year was a year of major decisions for me. As a lot of you know, I do have two engineering degrees. One is a BS in Mechanical Engineering and another is a MS in Aerospace Engineering with a focus in structures. Due to a lot of company mishaps with the 737 MAX, Fuselage manufacturing issues with the 787, Boeing moving a lot of its product and manufacturing from the Pacific North West to South Carolina, how bad decisions Boeing makes, and attempting to find a job for two years at Boeing and other companies without success despite all that, I’ve had to do things like finding employment in unaffiliated jobs while also trying to pursue a degree in something else. I decided to pursue an English degree as a result of this. Yes, I have tried applying for a lot of things, but those barely resulted in anything and with the pandemic, what I am interested in getting in are not likely going to start up for a while either. The reason why I say this hasn’t changed me much is the fact that I have been job searching for two years. This problem happened before the pandemic happened and now it’s more solidified in badness if that makes sense.

It took me half a year to make that decision, research a lot of research in places and locations that I can go to school for the best value, and figuring out whether or not I have the money to do it, but it all led to that happening. I am living at home at the moment unfortunately, but I can’t do anything about that right now. I think the major thing is my thought process in why I am going for the degree I am. Not only to open more doors, but because I enjoy it myself. Blogging has made me realize how much I enjoy writing and maybe I want to pursue a job in that market. I am still thinking of technical writing right now because of a certain degree of focus, but I am also doing this for myself. If this doesn’t change anything, then I know that I’ve had fun achieving the degree I wanted to achieve. I keep thinking about whether I enjoyed my engineering degree experience at all and I don’t think I did. I enjoyed being there and the community around me and I was always good at solving mathematical problems and I think that connection of loving being involved at school and getting that degree are the same thing. I didn’t realize that at the time. I felt more motivated in ever in trying school once again.

My one personal goal is becoming a freelancer technical writer in Summer 2021 to gain some more experience besides finishing this degree by the end of the year. That way, I will have some more experience in what I am intending to pursue in the future. I have to try at least. For right now, I’m too busy to do that and need to find a limit somehow

That’s it for myself. Let’s talk about some blogging achievements.

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Blogging Achievements

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Pursuing 5K Views/Month:

I don’t know how this happened, but the number of views that I’ve achieved 5K in December 2020. That is a barrier I never thought I would break. I’m still thinking about how this has happened because I don’t advertise myself that well or pay for advertisement anywhere, I don’t attach a lot of my content to more platforms where views can possibly come from, I just have the basic facebook group and twitter pop ups for the things that I write about and that amazes me. No inserting some random franchises to search to, just my posts and what they are. I’m sure that people being home more and going online has something to do with it too, but still I’m happy. I’m so happy that I am here and I am thinking about ways to push this blog out to more eyes in the future. For now, I am enjoying the moment.

My 1000th Post

It’s crazy to think about how I’ve gone beyond 1000 posts now. That post being a Lupin post of all things. How crazy is that? Everything I’ve done now is beyond 1000 posts and that shows how long I’ve been here. I hope to get that number to 2000 before I stop one day. For now, enjoying the moment.

Advertising Manga for Viz Media

Yeah, that was a thing that happened. What? I caught the attention of Viz Media back in March and I didn’t even know this fact until I checked my feedback in late April. One of my One Piece posts must have gained their attention, so I started writing blog posts about the manga they allowed me to read ahead of time for other people to know about a show. It’s been another door in opening how much manga that I’ve read. I have some manga that I am waiting for approval to read right now too. I don’t know how it happened, but I am glad that it did.

Creating Scott’s Muse

IF you haven’t seen it yet, Scott’s Muse is a blog where I post my trumpet music. It’s a blog that exists because my community band shutting down from the pandemic. To continue practicing, I felt like I needed a goal to keep playing and that’s where this blog came from. It only has three posts on it at the moment, but I’m decently happy with the results so far. Please check it out if you get a chance. Here is where you can find it: Link.

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All Collaborations From This Year

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Collab Posts This Year:

TTGL with Ashley Capes
Sci-Fi and Sparkles 2: Electric Boogaloo (This Title was Fun, Ok? It’s not the actual one.)
Beastars Collab with Irina
Tower of God Collab with Irina
Flavors of Youth with Ospreyshire
Kappa Mikey Collab with K

I’m always up for more if you are Interested. Please DM me if you want to.

Collaboration Projects I was Involved With:

Moya’s Controversed Project
WordPress Anime Awards 2020
OWLS
My New Interview Collab Idea
Mecha March Podcast Collab with the Build Divers Podcast and Others

Jon Spencer’s Various Projects:

The Jon Spencer Showcase
Anime Exchange
Spooky Story
Music Creation

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Failures

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I decided not to do a blogging tour, because it was too much work at the time. I may or may not due one this coming year. I have also not watched Xabungle yet again, but I plan on watch this during the weekends very soon. I’m excited to dive into it.

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Random Things That happened

I don’t know how it happened, but I somehow went through every single Patlabor series in 2020 along with starting One Piece somehow? Both of these were not originally a part of my plan, but I enjoyed writing about them. It did push some of my plans out of whack like watching the rest of Masaki Yuasa’s work, but that’s ok. I will try again this year. Speaking of those hopes and dreams.

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2021 Plans and Hopes

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Mecha March 2021

This is obviously going to happen. I have done a lot of work in making this happen already, so be ready for another month of mecha content once again and an announcement post to appear in Febuary 2021 for more details. Muahahaha!

Gen Urobuchi Month (Later 2021)

Anno August was a success in 2019 and Oshii October was a success in 2020, so I want to attempt to cover a lot of Gen Urobuchi works later this year. Urobuchi is another one of my favorite writers and directors and a lot of anime series are shorter in length, so I want to rewatch a lot of his work once again this year and talk about each of them somehow. I am hoping to be able to achieve this somehow. We will see how it goes.

More Gundam

I plan on reviewing Gundam Igloo, The Gundam Origin OVA, Zeta Gundam, and Double Zeta Gundam. There will be a lot of gundam content, but it won’t be as consistent as 2020. Hope you don’t mind this.

More Focus on Older Shows

Thanks to Retrocrush, I have had access to more older series and I want to watch more of them. I will still watch newer non seasonals too, but I have just been in a mood for watching older series, you know? I want to have a balance between the two and I will find it somehow.

Space Brothers and Getter Robo Manga Journeys (Maybe)

I have attained a lot of the Space Brother manga and all of Getter Robo and I plan on doing something similar to what I did with One Piece once I am done catching up with that series in terms of post writing and reading. We shall see if this happens, but it would be just fun to read both of these in general anyway. It’s about time to do it honestly.

Blogging Tour? (Maybe)

Once again, I am unsure whether or not I will have the time to try this again at some point. We shall see how that goes. For now, I am just going to enjoy what I’ve been doing and having some fun.

Monthly Podcast (We Will See How This Goes)

Ever since I have done some audio form content, I have been thinking about digging into more of it through a podcast of some sort. I have had a failure last time I tried, but I would like to try it again with a different focus this time. I won’t share if with you encase it doesn’t happen, but just say that it wouldn’t surprise you if it suddenly disappeared after the first episode.