Apologies for doing this completely out of the blue, but there’s something I need to get off my chest.
To those who care enough, no, I am not cancelling the current Summer; rather, I am shaking it up just a tad to try and reinvigorate my interest in doing it. This is all thanks to one unexpected circumstance that has arisen since I started last month:
I’m already burned out.
Perhaps gone unnoticed by general readers, my pace has been much slower than I would like it to be. At this rate, I would be done with the Summer by the sixteenth of August, which is within the designated timeframe but much too close for comforts for my taste. Finding manga to fit within the criteria I set for myself while also being interesting enough for me to even want to read becomes much harder when the accessibility of many manga are far more limited than their anime counterpart. Whoops, it hasn’t finished publication. Whoops, it isn’t fully scanlated. Whoops, it’s not available in a format that makes it more convenient to see if it fits the page count minimum. All this combined with the mounting pressure of speed with the dawn of a new month has made me ambitiously reclusive.
My continuing collaboration with Karandi at 100wordanime made me realize that I simply miss watching anime. Therefore, for the sake of variety and self-renewal, I will continue as planned until I hit twenty completed manga titles. Then, I will cross off the remaining twenty manga spots in favor of ten spots for any non-ongoing anime. It will be a manga and anime crossover co-ed school of thought as a first ever for the Summer. The idea has been swirling in my head like mad for the past hour or so and I’m already eyeing titles to watch when it comes to it. May as well roll with it.
With this now in place, a few changes I’ll mark down for my own convenience, though perhaps you, the reader, may appreciate them as well.
- I have dropped two manga so far, so with four left I will revoke any dropping privileges for the duration of the manga side of the Summer.
- For the anime side of the Summer, I will allow myself two drops.
- The Summer will now be referred to as “Summer of M/A” or “SoM/A.”
My pride hates that I’m doing this, but sometimes some flexibility can do good for a struggling, er, “artist.” I hope everyone will continue to support the blog and I’m ever thankful that anyone stops by to hear what I have to say.
To a good rest-of-Summer!
EDIT: After finishing the seventeenth manga entry, I’ve become so sick of looking for manga that I just said “Fuck it” and started the anime section. It’s horribly uneven, but hopefully the Summer will end with seventeen manga titles and thirteen anime titles.
The Visualist's Veranda 
Sometimes we all need to shift gears. Hope the anime switch is just what you need!