A Year to Look Forward To

For those of you who have been reading my blog for a while, you know that at the beginning of every year since 2016, I go and review how well I kept my resolutions. This will be the third time I’m doing this review and I hope that there will be many more to come. So let’s start with our annual tradition of listing out the resolutions and reflecting on how well I did in regards to them.

Start becoming more active on social media

This one is something that I can honestly say I did much better in 2017 than in 2016. I have many more posts in 2017, no matter how mundane they were(usually about the horrible weather in Indiana). I actually chose Instagram as my go-to social media instead of Twitter because I very much prefer photography than to just right out words. Of course, all the statuses were posted to Twitter too, but I found that I got a higher level of engagement with my readers on Instagram than Twitter, so starting this year, I’m gonna take my Instagram game to the next level. Instead of taking photos on my phone, I’ll be importing pictures from my camera and showcasing some of the photographs I got over winter break as well as for reviews. Higher image quality, better composition and the like will be the goal here. Let’s see whether this year I can break through to 500 followers.

One review every two weeks without fail, no excuses

Now this is where I’m a little embarrassed to say that I absolutely wasn’t able to keep this. The hiatus I took in order to dedicate almost all my free time and effort into studying for my classes(which were especially intense last semester) didn’t allow me that much time to really use new stationary. I stuck to what I now find to be my go-to setup for absolutely any school related work. In fact, I refilled my Lamy 2K over 7 times with the same Iroshizuku Shin-Kai. It just works and I felt that it was unnecessary and risky to change inks in the middle without knowing how it would write. If you saw my last post, you know why there was such a huge gap in the reviews. This year, I hope to actually keep this resolution because despite me studying for another semester, I need to refine my time management skills, because I hope to continue this blog for a while and to do that, I’m going to have to develop the ability to schedule time to sit down and write reviews no matter what’s going on. I really love this blog and the experience of trying out new stationary. If you love something, you’ll find time for it and that’s exactly what I’m going to do this year.

Improve my photography which I feature in my reviews

This is a little subjective, but I definitely feel that I grew as a photographer when it came to the things I was trying out in regards to composition and color. I tried to actively deviate from the standard angles that I usually present with my reviews and go for something that presents a different perspective of any ordinary pen or ink. While I did have problems with lighting, I feel that overall, I did well in compensating against the limitations of my background. This year, I want to try to go for something completely different. I want to capture pictures of the pens I review out in the wild. Using the beautiful backdrops provided by nature, I want to mix up the background of my shots to allow the pens to show more of their beauty. In addition, this would also help with the lighting situation and it would allow me to go outside and exercise my photographic capabilities every one in a while.

Work on getting some kind of sponsorship

Another year and this resolution still manages to elude me. I really am struggling with this one because I’m just not sure how to go about accomplishing it. This year, I have made this one of my personal resolutions to accomplish, because as we all know, buying new pens can be very expensive. This is an expensive hobby and while I’m so happy that I’ve been able to review so many different stationary products from all kinds of brands, it is starting to really drain the wallet. So this year, I’m going to endeavor to make this one of my main resolutions alongside the post frequency. Hopefully, I can make this happen so I can keep bringing unique pens to review without making my wallet cry.

That’s all for the resolutions of the year. I aim make this one of the greatest years for the The Passionate Penman. Thank you for all your love and support, I wish you all a great year ahead and I hope to see you again next week for the upcoming review. Until next time. 🙂

Starting the New Year

Hello Everyone,

First off, I want to wish all of you a very Happy New Year. It’s been a while since I last updated and many things have happened. This post was initially slated for yesterday, but it took me a while to figure out how to not make it sound like a giant excuse. The hiatus that occurred from the end of July was something that I didn’t intend to happen, but it did anyway. The upcoming semester at the time was crucial for my academic career, so I decided to discard nearly every one of my hobbies including this blog, to try to perform well. I’m happy to report that I performed better than ever before and I broke through what I thought were my limits. In doing so, I have left you, my dear readers devoid of content and reviews and for that, I am truly apologetic. However, now that the previous semester is over, I can say with confidence that I will be able to go back to posting new reviews. I will be detailing the specifics in my next post which should drop the day after tomorrow. I want to thank each and every one of you for your patience and support. I started this blog as a hobby and never expected to get the kind of readership you all have given me. I am honored that there are people in the pen community who put stock into my reviews and enjoy my content. So I feel that the best way to start the new year would be to set expectations and stick to them no matter what. I can’t wait to start posting more content up and I hope we have a great year together.

Sincerely,

Anchit, The Passionate Penman