Six years ago today, I wrote my very first blog post.

At the time, I was all excitement and ideas. Endless possibilities. Within two months, the grand premise of our blog, "to introduce, explain, discuss, and demystify various hobbies and fandoms to promote an understanding between geeks and to spark an interest in the things that interest us," had become less of a mission statement and more of a general suggestion. My blogging buddy Alex and I didn't write for Exfanding Your Horizons so much as we wrote for ourselves, and the things we wrote happened to be a good fit for the blog most days. Even when the enthusiasm cooled and the inspiration ran thin, there was never any question about keeping the blog going. It was a habit. It was a part of our lives. Nobody wonders how long they'll keep their routine of eating breakfast in the morning before giving it up forever; there are certain assumptions we make. There was never any question that Exfanding would go on indefinitely.

Then suddenly it stopped, and we were on indefinite hiatus.

Look at my first post on this blog. James Bond would return. It was only a matter of time.

Look at my reflections from this time last year. That guy flipping burgers in the back might be Elvis, but in all likelihood, the King had come and gone.

By now, I've come to grips with the fact that I'll never have breakfast again.

Not that I'd turn it down. If Alex came back and said, "Hey, let's get the blog going again," I'd say, "Whoa! I haven't heard from you in, like, a year! How's work? How's life? And also, yes." But The Great Exfanding Revival of 20XX is no longer something I anticipate, or even necessarily hope for. I'll say it again: We had a good run at Exfanding. Past tense. It took me some time to wrap my head around the inevitable discontinuation of the thing that would go on forever, but my satisfaction with what the both of us accomplished through our humble little blog has never wavered.

If anything, I look back more fondly as the years go by. Perhaps that's the real reason why I'm still celebrating. I replay Crystalis every year on The END DAY not because I'm secretly hoping for a sequel, but because I love the game and don't need much of an excuse to relive the fond memories. Why should Exfanding be any different?

I attended a wedding recently, and there I got to catch up with some friends I haven't seen since Otakon last year. You might recall my ill-fated attempt to write about the big anime convention, which never ended up being the lengthy post I'd originally intended thanks to how much the negative obscured the positive. Talking with these friends got me to thinking about the convention again, particularly about how I'd do things differently if I ever went back. The foundations of a blog post began to coalesce inside my head.

I often skim back through my old posts when they're relevant to a new post I'm preparing to write, and I surprised myself when I reread my joint recap of New York Comic-Con / Anime Festival 2011 and came across this statement about conventioning:

"Show up and have fun" only works when you have no idea what you're getting into.

Remind me to start taking my own advice. Many factors impacted my enjoyment of Otakon last year—and I'll reiterate that I did enjoy parts of it—but I was neither deliberate enough to avoid nor relaxed enough to deal with the headaches and setbacks I faced. I had certain expectations for the convention, but I left their fulfillment up to chance and to other people whose expectations didn't necessarily mirror my own. No wonder I got so grouchy.

Next time I go to a convention, I think I'm going to play by these rules:

1. Plan each day from start to finish. Know the bus schedule, have a place picked out for lunch, map out the most efficient routes to get around the convention center, prepare to arrive early enough to see the things you most want to see. Logistics alone can derail an otherwise wonderful convention; if you've got the power to control them, do it.
   
   
2. Communicate with others. If you're going with a group or even one other person, let them know your expectations for the convention. Tell them your plans, and understand theirs. If you want to spend time with other people, make sure it's on their schedule as well as yours.
   
   
3. Always have a fallback plan. Have a list of alternate panels, screenings, and other events to attend if your first pick falls through. Have a fail-safe backup plan if those fall through, too—something you can do that doesn't hinge on you showing up at a particular time and getting in before everyone else. Dealers Rooms, Game Rooms, and simply going back to the hotel to recharge are great options.
   
   
4. Make time to bring back memories. Stop to take photographs. Talk with cosplayers and vendors. Don't rush the shopping. Plan something big with the people in your group. Keep a journal. One thing I started to do at Comic-Con, which I hope to make a tradition of, was going around Artist Alley with a blank notebook and asking one artist after another for a quick sketch or doodle of whatever they felt like drawing. This makes for a great fallback plan, too.
   
   
5. If you're going in costume, be committed to the costume. Don't dress up out of compulsion; dress up because you love the character, love the costume, and would rather suffocate under layers of foam and cotton in the middle of summer than walk around the convention like a normal person, or whatever passes for a normal person outside the walls of the convention center.
   
   
6. Go back and reread this post before leaving for the convention. With any luck, I'll follow my own advice this time.

Collecting art is a funny thing for me. Geeky memorabilia notwithstanding, there's relatively little in my home that I myself have collected for the sake of putting on display...but I'm my no means an implacable art critic or a hater of the visual arts. I like small souvenirs of the neat places I've visited—a model lighthouse here, a golden trolley there—and I appreciate certain examples of painting and photography as much as anyone. Glass, stone, and metal are materials I find interesting in raw form, let alone crafted into something deliberately for display. There's plenty of art I could collect, but unlike practically anything else I collect, I approach each piece like I'm getting married to it.

Collectables from my favorite fandoms are easy. Do I like it? Can I afford it? Decision made. Putting fictional worlds into tangible form brings my escapist fantasies closer to reality, on top of looking cool. Collecting objects purely for their decorative properties—and perhaps for some sentimental value, depending on the circumstances—is another matter entirely. Art is often an investment. Can I justify spending boo-hah bucks on a painting that fills a space on the wall that could otherwise be covered with a cheap-but-awesome poster? Art is often impractical. I can always pick up my model spaceships and fly them around the house if I want to give them a more practical function as playthings (I'm grown-up enough to admit I still do this sometimes), but swinging around a statue of The Thinker can only end in calamity, if we've learned anything from Phoenix Wright. If all I'm going to do is look at the thing, it's gotta be visually interesting to the point where I can justify paying money to have it in my house and taking up space for the rest of my life.

Suddenly I'm wondering if marriage was the best comparison to use here.

All I'm getting at is that collecting art is, to me, not something I do without careful consideration. I've since turned my attention elsewhere from some of my earlier favorite fandoms, but if you gave me an Inspector Gadget action figure or a Fraggle Rock poster, I'd gladly put them on display—remembering the times when those were big influences makes me happy, and I never really stopped being a fan. I don't know that I'd say the same about some of the more traditional art I've considered over the years; tastes change, and I would be doing myself a disservice to commit to bringing such an investment into my life strictly because I think it's pretty at this particular moment. If I'm going to be serious about collecting art, I want the object of my interest to fascinate me, transform a room by its presence, start compelling conversations, be a suitable companion no matter where my life may lead me, and look nice. But that last part's just a bonus.

Suddenly I think marriage might've been the right comparison after all.

I was an avid reader when I was younger—I had a fifth-grade reading level in first grade, as I recall, and I grew up with a mother who was only ever seen without a book in hand when gardening, cooking, or giving me a hug—but middle school gradually changed reading from a pleasure activity into a draining, focus-intensive task. Video games filled the leisure void where reading used to be, and it wasn't until I was tapped to play Gilderoy Lockhart at the local library's midnight release of the latest Harry Potter book that I got back into reading. Getting up to speed on the world I was about to enter was more fun than I anticipated, and I continued to devour the series well after my wizarding engagement had ended. In college, I managed to swing Religion as a second major with minimal extra strain on my schedule, and I discovered that reading for class could also be reading for pleasure if the course matter and literature selection aligned with my interests. It took years, but I'm reading again. Mostly just sci-fi, humor, and religion, with the occasional graphic novel, but reading is reading, right?

Some time ago, I was given a book by my long-suffering friend, who has a history of thoughtfully and carefully selecting gifts for me that I inevitably complain about when I finally get around to taking them off the shelf a few years later. While that sounds terrible (and it is), the bigger picture is that his gifts always get a strong response from me, positive or negative—it's a testament to how well he knows me that the best gifts are awesome, and the ones I complain about are video games that would have been awesome if it weren't for one or two major problems that aren't apparent until you're playing the game for yourself. Keeping things on the shelf for years isn't a sign of disrespect or a lack of interest; with an entire lifetime hopefully still ahead of me to pick things up off the shelf, I like to keep things in reserve until I'm in the right time and place to get the most out of them. Such was the case with this book—Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project—which reentered my life at exactly the right time.

Life circumstances were stressing me out, and equally importantly, I was recently disappointed by Michael Dorn's Time Blender and needed a new book that preferably wouldn't turn out to be only half a story because the first hundred pages were mostly drawn-out introduction for a sequel. I reasoned that good fiction hinges on too many variables, but nonfiction can get away with less if the topic is sufficiently educational and thought-provoking on its own. What nonfiction did I have on my shelf?

The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun had always looked like an interesting read, yet it kept slipping out of sight every time I went digging through my collection. I wouldn't be surprised if a little bit of divine intervention kept me distracted with other books the last several years; I wanted--needed—something to lift my spirits, and if something called The Happiness Project can't, then I'm moving to another universe.

In short, the book is the story of one woman's year-long effort to focus on improving her own happiness in various aspects of her life. The tales she relays about her own successes, the quotes she produces from famous thinkers, and the way she analyzes everything from energy to parenting to friendship have inspired me to reexamine my own situation, apply some of the techniques she's found beneficial, and consider a Happiness Project of my own. In fact, this post is part of a mini-project to write more often, because writing makes me happy. So as to have time to properly digest each chapter, I've only been reading one chapter every day or few days; it's been barely a week, and already I'm seeing a result from applying what I've read.

There's more I could say, but I'd like a little more time for my thoughts to simmer before launching into a full overview of the book (which I'm sure you can find elsewhere) and how it's been moving me to change my approach to my own happiness (which I'm sure I'll write about if I move forward with a formal Happiness Project in the future). The important part is that I'm happy to be reading, and reading is making me happy. For now, I'll leave it at that.

I am an anime fan, but for reasons previously discussed elsewhere, I don't often write about my fondness for this fandom. I've been to a few conventions, dressed up as a few characters, purchased numerous DVDs and a manga or two, received a calendar and a couple figurines as gifts, put up a wall scroll and a small handful of posters in my home, even had (or still have) a minor crush on a few characters who I readily recognize are fictional—that's more than enough for me to have plenty to write about Japanese animation and the surrounding fan culture.

Still, next to anyone else I've ever met who likes anime, I'm a rookie and a casual fan at best. I watch a combination of maybe a half dozen films and series a year, I write up a post if there's one like Fullmetal Alchemist or _Clannad or Gurren Lagann or Black Lagoon that sparks a strong enough reaction, and then I go back to Star Trek and Mega Man and whatever else it is that everyone thinks I exclusively do. I'm neither diehard enough nor well-versed enough to feel inspired or qualified to say very much about the medium most days.

I've got my favorites, though: Blue Seed, the formulaic and often intentionally funny action series that acted as my first formal introduction to anime; Trigun, the slightly sci-fi western with a satisfying balance of goofiness and thought-provoking seriousness; Azumanga Daioh!, the cute, innocent, and hysterical slice-of-life heartwarmer; Neon Genesis Evangelion, the classic mind-bending show that starts off about kids piloting giant robots and ends in buh-wha-huuuuuuuuh!?; and the first seven episodes of the aforementioned Black Lagoon, before everything gets all stabby and uncomfortable. There are plenty of honorable mentions, too: Panda-Z, FLCL, Fruits Basket, Dirty Pair, Read or Die, Spirited Away, Perfect Blue, Onegai Teacher, Poyopoyo Kansatsu Nikki, Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, Tokyo Godfathers, Crying Freeman, Soul Eater, Doraemon, and Sekirei—and if you know anything about these anime, this is a weird list of honorable mentions.

Not as weird as it could be, though. I have no stomach for graphic violence, little or no interest in the supernatural, no particular attachment to steampunk or traditional fantasy, no patience for series that take five episodes to tell a story that could fit into one, and a slew of other preferences and intolerances that tend to rule out sticking with certain films or series, assuming I bother with them in the first place. Drastically dissimilar as some of my favorites and honorable mentions may be, there are some commonalities between many of them: funny or lighthearted, action-oriented, intellectually challenging, emotionally uplifting, beautifully animated, excessively cute, populated with compelling female characters, family-friendly, and light on censorship. Anything I've mentioned probably meets at least four of these criteria.

Evangelion remains my favorite TV anime, and I've been looking forward to adding the reboot series to the collection, just as soon as I'm positive it's all been released and I have any idea how to decipher installment titles like Evangelion 3.141592: You Will [Not] Figure This Out Anytime Soon. However, there's one series I enjoy even more than Eva, and it's one that holds a special place in my heart: you see, I might not be married if it weren't for Lupin III.

My wife and I went to the same college and ran in many of the same geeky circles. One fateful night, things were slow at the video game club, and we opted to skip out early. We talked on the way back to our respective dorms, decided neither of us was tired, and she invited me to watch anime in her dorm. Enter Lupin III and his merry band of elite and stylish thieves. (Hopefully you have a mental picture of Lupin, Jigen, Goemon, and sometimes Fujiko piling into the dorm room with us, with Zenigata and his army of policemen behind them, because that's exactly how it happened.) I loved everything about it: the characters, the dynamics between them, the sight gags, the over-the-top action sequences ("He cut a plane in half with a sword!")--Lupin III was pure fun. Getting to share that time with someone equally fun made it even better.

We ended up staying awake until 4:30 in the morning just talking after the anime ran out (and I hope you're now picturing Lupin and the gang making a hasty egress through the door and window). We were good acquaintances before, but Lupin III is, for me, the start of where we became good friends and eventually a couple. My wife informs me this actually happened on a different occasion watching Read or Die, which just reinforces my sentiment that I'm not qualified to talk about anime.

Normally I introduce these retrospectives with a blurb about the state of my creative endeavors or what was going on in my life the previous month. I'm going to try to start blogging more, like I used to when I was writing for Exfanding, so I'm holding those thoughts in reserve for some potential future posts. In the meantime, here's what I've got to show for myself from July:

This Blog:

I'm fairly certain it took me as long to write about Mass Effect 3 as it did to play it. Spending so much time working on such a colossal and critical post, however, got me eager to focus on something refreshing and different—stories, perhaps, or at least the kinds of posts that don't require days, let alone weeks, of revision and rewriting. This line of thinking helped prompt the last post of the month, and hopefully it's a first step toward the next phase of my writing on this blog.

- Retrospective: June 2014
- Mass Defect 3
- Ruminations on Writing

GameCola:

This may be an all-time low. I've had many all-time lows during my time writing video game humor outside the mainstream, but resorting to an (admittedly technically relevant) irrelevant-to-gaming post was not how I envisioned meeting my quota. I was probably going to post it anyhow, but it looks worse when my only other contribution is a podcast (which only counts for half credit anyhow) in which I was only somewhat qualified to participate.

- No Beard, No Good
- GC Podcast #75: We Don’t Talk About the Dark Times

YouTube:

I did it! I made a new video! You're so proud. I know; I know—get back to work and make the next one...

- Mega Man 7 - Part 7: Get Your Weapons Ready, Already

The Backloggery:

A free giveaway and a surprise opportunity to affordably pick up something that's been on my list account for the (nowadays) unusual amount of new material for my backlog. Everything else was either the continuation of an ongoing project of some sort or an attempt at something considerably shorter and fluffier than the Mass Effect trilogy.

New:
- Mega Man X8  (PS2)
- The Sims 2 Complete  (Origin)

Started:
- Kid Icarus  (NES)
- The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse  (SNES)
- Tomb Raider III  (PC)

Beat:
- Castlevania: Rondo of Blood  (VC)
- Kid Icarus  (NES)
- The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse  (SNES)

Completed:
- Castlevania: Rondo of Blood  (VC)
- Kid Icarus  (NES)
- LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues  (Wii)

In the process of writing this post, I think I figured out how I'm going to step up my blogging this month. Let's see how this mid-year resolution pans out...