So after the previous blog’s disaster of dealing with the market crash, I had all of this week to work on getting back into the swing of things. The market’s still been volatile, but work’s evened out again for the most part, which meant I had the time available to ramp back up on my Spanish study time, as well as work on writing again, which is something I’ve been kicking myself to get back into gear on for a while now. I could have really made some headway if I tried hard enough.
And as it turns out, I didn’t really do that.
Okay, not being entirely fair, my numbers bounced back up from where they were at last week (which wasn’t even that bad, I was being a little melodramatic), so it wasn’t like I had a case of burnout or something. I succeeded at the little challenge I set for myself of the four worst days from this last calendar week being better than the four worst days from the week before (I succeeded by 50 minutes for the week). Hell, I won, and skipped the pie reward even, so I’m doing really well, honestly. The writing’s still a problem, but that’s been a problem, so it isn’t like I did something special as far as missing out on it this week, right?
Well, sorta. I can cut myself some slack on the writing, but I think that if I counted this week’s Spanish challenge as a true victory, I’d be doing myself a disservice, because frankly, I could have done better each day, given the time available to me to work. There was space available to fit in more reading in the later evening at work that I didn’t take advantage of, nor did I use the time in the evening after work to get anything done, despite not being worn out from a hard day. I spent a lot of time this week not doing much of anything, which makes my “success” at my little challenge to myself feel pretty mercurial.
The truth is, this last week was a weird one for me, outside of work and Spanish stuff. I had some extra stuff going on that drove me to distraction, and probably earned that distraction for me. In the last week, I built two pieces of Ikea furniture, and started HRT, so, you know, kinda caught up in my own stuff beyond this project. It was a busy, weird week.
The bright side of things is, looking back on myself from a few years ago, had I gone through a similarly busy week, I would have 100% for sure failed to get anything done at all. It really goes to show how powerful building a daily habit can be that I had a mostly successful week. A mercurial victory is still a victory, after all.
I’m trying to cut myself a little slack moving into next week, while at the same time trying to double down on getting back to work. I’m approaching the end of Mago Maestro pretty soon here, but if I don’t step it up it’s going to take me ages to get through the whole series at this rate. After all, yeah, this week was an odd one, but there are going to be other odd weeks in the future, too. I’ll take them being mercurial victories provided I can keep things going strong through the strange, but I’d really much rather them just end up being plain ol’ victories.
Well, let’s take a look at this week’s numbers.
Tuesday 3/03
- Duolingo: 20 XP earned, ~0 minutes
- Reading: 2% of Mago Aprendiz, ~30 minutes
- Watching/Listening: 5 episodes of Daniel San GMR, 1 episode of Arte Divierte, 1 episode of Ducktales, ~120 minutes
- Speaking: reading out loud, ~30 minutes
Wednesday 3/04
- Duolingo: 20 XP earned, ~0 minutes
- Reading: 4% of Mago Maestro, ~60 minutes
- Watching/Listening: 3 episodes of Daniel San GMR, 1 episode of La Zona Cero, ~60 minutes
- Speaking: reading out loud, ~30 minutes
Thursday 3/05
- Duolingo: 20 XP earned, ~0 minutes
- Reading: 4% of Mago Maestro, ~60 minutes
- Watching/Listening: 1 episode of DSimphony, 1 episode of Ducktales, ~60 minutes
- Speaking: reading out loud, ~30 minutes
Friday 3/06
- Duolingo: 20 XP earned, ~0 minutes
- Reading: 6% of Mago Maestro, ~90 minutes
- Watching/Listening: 1 episode of DSimphony, 1 episode of Ducktales, ~60 minutes
- Speaking: reading out loud, ~30 minutes
Saturday 3/07
- Duolingo: 20 XP earned, ~0 minutes
- Reading: 2% of Mago Maestro, ~30 minutes
- Watching/Listening: 2 episodes of DSimphony, 1 episode of Castlevania, ~120 minutes
- Speaking: reading out loud, ~30 minutes
Sunday 3/08
- Duolingo: 20 XP earned, ~0 minutes
- Reading: 2% of Mago Maestro, ~30 minutes
- Watching/Listening: 3 episodes of DSimphony, ~120 minutes
- Speaking: reading out loud, ~30 minutes
Monday 3/09
- Duolingo: 20 XP earned, ~0 minutes
- Reading: 4% of Mago Maestro, ~60 minutes
- Watching/Listening: 1 episode of DSimphony, 1 episode of Daniel San GMR, ~60 minutes
- Speaking: reading out loud, ~30 minutes
- Total Duolingo: 140 XP, 0 minutes
- Total reading: 1/4 books read, 360 minutes
- Total watching/listening: 19 YouTube episodes and 4 tv episodes, 600 minutes
- Total speaking: reading out loud, 210 minutes
- Total Time: 16 hours 0 minutes
Again, not bad numbers by any means, and just a smidge down from where I aim for them to be. Tuesday being a personal day for me, I treated it much like the weekend and stuffed it full with more listening practice. This resulted in me getting through the series I was watching on Daniel San GMR pretty early in the week, and when figuring out what to go onto next, I went back to a youtube channel I stumbled across months ago, but hadn’t ever gotten past one episode, which is a gaming channel called DSimphony. I’d been meaning to go back, but hadn’t, and wasn’t quite sure why. Starting in on the channel again, I understand why, which is that it’s very difficult for me to understand. Something about the way the hosts talk makes them super hard for me to follow for some reason. I probably stuck the channel in the ‘later’ pile, because I couldn’t really understand them at all at the time. They’re still pretty dang hard, but I can follow the episodes without too much of a struggle, and I think getting through a series like this that’s at the very upper range of my listening comprehension is probably a good use of my time, so I’ll be sticking to it for the time being.
Of other watching things, a new season of Castlevania came out on Netflix, which I had liked well enough through the first two seasons, so it’s back on the list for me. I’m also building up the desire to rewatch Little Witch Academia soon. I’ll get through all the things I want to watch eventually. I hope.
Moving into next week, I’d like for more and better numbers, and I’m hoping I can really get writing off the ground in a sustainable way. For all the talk of the week being weird, I’m honestly in a pretty great place now. It took a long time to get onto HRT, thanks to awkwardness with appointments and other things I had to do before I could start taking the medicine and being made to wait turned me into a bundle of anxiety and emotions. Getting started was a huge relief, a relief so big I’ve been struggling to recover from it, if that make sense. I’m doing better now that I have some distance from it, and think that overall I’m going to be doing better and better, and the only thing that’s really missing from my life anymore is my writing. So time to really work on that, I think. Work permitting. The market hasn’t stabilized just yet, and I never know what sort of day I’m going to get at work anymore.
Anyway, that’ll do for this week. TTFN.
Fumbling Toward Fluent 