Eight glorious years of the pantless anime blogger. I’ll admit that 40% of this journey is me burning out or slacking off, and that’s really just part of the experience. Now, first off, I am not back doing reviews. I’m honestly not in the mood for it and I also don’t have the capacity to do them. Yes, even in quarantine, I can’t really review anime. I don’t have a laptop and I’m honestly too busy to even watch anime. Life has been interesting and weird these past months. Living in a different country is just a bounty of experiences and I’m not done exploring it all. Yes, even in quarantine.

But, eight years. Let’s get back to this. I don’t really know what to do to celebrate this moment. I frankly haven’t prepared anything, and I only remembered because wordpress notified me via email. I am way too rusty to talk about anime, since I haven’t touched the thing in months now. I don’t miss it and I am focused on other things. Still, eight years, let’s do something about it. Let’s do a ten-part post about something, like what I used to do. Let me just fire up chatmonchy in the background and get this ball rolling.

Ok, I’ll do a list of what I personally do when I review anime. I believe I did a ten-part post about tips in reviewing anime, and I guess I’ll do ten more. Before that though, I would like to say thank you. I want to thank everyone reading this. I want to especially thank the lurkers who undoubtedly is reading this right now wondering what I’m doing with my life. You guys, my quiet readers, my fresh visitors clicking every review in the alphabetical list, and the loyal readers that doesn’t comment. To all of you, I want to say thank you.

To actually prove I have lurkers supporting this site, how about you actually prove you exist by commenting below. Or not. I don’t care. Onto the list.

TPAB’s Top Ten (More): Tips in Reviewing Anime

1. The Burnout is Real

Again, this isn’t really a top ten list. I just wanted to tag this under those top ten things I do. For more tips, visit the first one I did. I believe I made that list three years ago but I think the advises still holds up.

Now, if you’re like me and you like to overextend your reach with things then you will eventually burn out. What is burning out? Basically, it’s when you do too much and then you just can’t do them anymore. You’re reached your limit and your body doesn’t want to continue. I’ve personally burned out in the worst way during my 1000 review journey. I always wanted to catch up with the times I’ve missed only to do too much and then growing sick of it all. If I was an efficient machine, I’d be in my 800^th review now with 100 reviews a year. I am unfortunately not a machine, instead I’m a soft human with an even softer brain. I foolishly thought I’d finish this goal in ten years and it obviously won’t go down like that. The burn outs are the main setbacks and I’ve honestly become a realist thanks to reviewing anime.

So what do you do when you burn out?

Realistically, nothing. You burned out for a reason. There’s no reason to continue. I could give you idealistic tips about how reaching your goal should be your motivation or how your love for anime can fuel you to keep moving forward. I thought so too way back when and it only made me burn out more. Again, you are not a machine. You have no obligation to keep watching anime or reviewing if you know you can’t do it. At best, you’d go on a long hiatus. At worst, you’ll phase out your love for anime completely.

When you burn out in reviewing or blogging, you should feel the burn and just stop. Forget about the stats, forget about the low comments and forget about missing out on that trendy anime. A new trendy anime will come along and you can hitch on that bandwagon.

You should realize that life is a long marathon. Pouring so much energy on reviewing or blogging won’t really get you far. In a few years, your old posts will mean nothing and you’ll be scrambling to reach your old success only to realize the readers aren’t there and you only just burned yourself out chasing that high.

So stop it. Live life. The best way to deal with your burn out is to let the process happen. Allow yourself a break and come back when you feel like it. You owe no one anything. This can wait. Life doesn’t.

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There’s your heavy real talk from the get go. The other tips on this list will play in the same ball pit. Or maybe not. I’m making things up as I go along.

Thank you for reading. Practice social distancing and I’ll see you on the next post.