The Thankful Tag: Being Grateful in 2021

In which we thank YumDeku for tagging us with the Thankful Tag and muse upon our blessings in the past, very strange, year.

Well, um, 2020 was a year, wasn’t it? Yes, indeed it was! I only got out a handful of blog posts last year, and there’s a very clear pattern:

• Something I’m interested in
• Assurance that I’m still alive
• Something that I’m interested in
• Assurance that I’m still alive
• Something that I’m interested in…

See the pattern?

Yeah, it was a hard year for me—and I say this with full cognizance that it was a lot harder for many others. Isolation was hard, transitioning to work from home on the spur of the moment was a challenge, and a particular relationship went heavily down the drain. Ultimately, I left my position in publishing to try freelancing. Our income dropped quite a bit, but so did my stress levels; and I’m finally finding the inclination to start blogging again. (Yay!)

To be quite honest, I’ve gotten out of the habit of reading my fellow anibloggers’ writings regularly. So it was with some surprise that when I did check in recently I found that some of you were still tagging me even after my dry spell in writing. One of these is the Thankful Tag.

The Thankful Tag

• The usual. Thank the person who tagged you and link back.
• Create a list of things you are thankful for. Don’t be stingy!
• Tag some people. Don’t be stingy. Of course, anyone who wants to pick up on this without being tagged, feel free!

So for starters, thank you YumDeku! I can’t describe how much it means to me to find that people still value me and my blog even after I’ve not done much with it for so long.

Where do I start with thanking? And where would I end? There’s so much!

• For you: readers, followers, and mutuals.
• That my family is in a secure enough situation that I could walk away from a bad work setting and not fear for our livelihood.
• That we survived 2020 and (so far) Covid-19.
• And finally, I’ll mention that I’m really looking forward to the new anime season just starting; so I’m thankful to all the people whose blood and sweat brought the new anime into being.

And who to tag? Well, I definitely need to tag Moya, as she’s one of those mutuals I’m most grateful to; she stuck around two years while we wrote about Toradora together! And also Crow, who still checks my blog every week(!) on the off chance I’ve written something new! And there’s Jenn, who I’ve always enjoyed chatting with on Twitter. There’s also a whole lot more, but we’ll save the rest of you for a future tag! 😉

Happy 2021! And happy Winter 2021 anime viewing!