2018 and the Unusual Anniversary

I started this blog on January 1st, 2017, which means I’ve been blogging for exactly 1 year today. However! I also registered the moderngafa Gmail account in 2008 and started a Blogspot movie review blog back then as well. So in a roundabout way, I’ve been blogging for ten years! Hit the jump to join me as I look back on 2017 and look forward to 2018.

While there has always been some version of The Modern Gafa in the past ten years, in 2017 the personal blog version you see before you became the biggest and most successful version. The web series I started in college was never popular outside of campus. The 2014 entertainment news site was kinda big but also kinda a mess. But let’s look at what the 2017 blog has accomplished.

1. I started reviewing things for Viz Media, Penguin Random House, ThinkGeek
2. I’ve attended local events hosted by the Arcade Comedy Theater, Carnegie Museums, and the Pittsburgh Japanese Culture Society.
3. I went to freakin’ New York Comic Con! Nuff said.
4. After years of exchanging friendly emails, I finally got to sit down with Jeff Nimoy and he was delightful.
5. I got married! That has nothing to do with the blog, but my posts about the wedding and the honeymoon were some of my biggest posts.

And that only scratches the surface. So many other cool things have happened in the past year. But we can’t be stuck in the past (I mean holy crap I met Peter Sudarso but still let’s move forward.)

In 2018 I want this blog to grow even more. Here are my long-term goals for 2018:

1. Travel more. I went on three big trips last year and would like to do… well as many as I can afford. But in the meantime, I want to explore some places in Pittsburgh that I haven’t been to yet.
2. Diversify my content. A lot of what I do is reviews, which is fine but not everyone is here for that. So I want to start doing more personal posts, more general lifestyle stuff, and more YouTube videos. This also leads into…
3. Post more. Right now my Saturday Morning Updates keep me on my toes with at least a weekly, albeit tiny and usually not interesting, post. Then, there is always at least one other post in there somewhere. So that’s 2 weekly posts with 1 being an “actual” post. I’d like to start doing at least 2 posts between updates, which will allow for more diverse content.

So those are some little New Year's resolutions for this little blog of mine. What are your plans for the new year? Let me know in the comments below!