Here again on Tuesday, let’s look at the numbers for the week, and back over November as a whole.
- Reading: 2% of Harrow la Novena, ~60 minutes
- Watching/Listening: 2 episodes of Kiwillius, ~60 minutes
- Speaking: reading out loud, ~30 minutes
Wednesday 12/01
- Reading: 3% of Harrow la Novena, ~60 minutes
- Watching/Listening: 1 episode of Kiwillius, ~60 minutes
- Speaking: reading out loud, ~30 minutes
Thursday 12/02
Friday 12/03
- No activity
Saturday 12/04
- Watching/Listening: 1 episode of Kiwillius, ~30 minutes
Sunday 12/05
- Watching/Listening: 1 episode of Kiwillius, ~30 minutes
Monday 12/06
- Reading: 2% of Harrow la Novena, ~60 minutes
- Watching/Listening: 2 episodes of Kiwillius, ~60 minutes
- Speaking: reading out loud, ~30 minutes
- Total reading: 1/10 books read, 180 minutes
- Total watching/listening: 8 YouTube episodes watched, 210 minutes
- Total speaking: reading out loud, 90 minutes
Total Time: 6 hours 30 minutes
So a normal start of the week that quickly went in a totally different direction. My friend came in from out of town on Thursday and stayed through the weekend. Friday was by far the busiest day, and thanks to my packed schedule I didn’t have a chance to touch anything related to Spanish for the first time in quite a while. It was an unusual event, so I’m not too chuffed about it, and I managed to find time over the rest of the long weekend to get some time in.
I finished the series I was watching on Kiwillius, and am now doing some cleanup on new episodes of stuff that have come out since I started those longer playthroughs, but after that I’m going to be ready to jump to watching something else for a bit. What exactly I’m still considering, for a reason I’ll get to after the month recap stuff.
Progress on Harrow la Novena also continues, albeit slowly thanks to a couple weeks in a row here of weird days. Good progress is being made overall, as I’m more than 2/3rds of the way through it, so I’ll likely be finishing in off in the next few weeks. What’s following that, I’ll also be discussing after the month’s recap. Speaking of which, let’s look at that now.
- Total Watching/Listening: 47 youtube videos watched, 1,320 minutes
- Total Reading: 1/3 whole books read, 1,020 minutes
- Total Writing: 0 words written, 0 minutes
- Total Speaking: reading out loud, 360 minutes
- Total Time: 39 hours 0 minutes
And here’s the breakdown for money spent.
- Netflix Subscription Standard HD Plan, Television and Movie Streaming, $10.99 per month, $10.99
- Disney+ Subscription, Television and Movie Streaming, $6.99 per month, $6.99
- Amount Spent on Services: $17.98
- Total Spent: $17.98
A weird month in a series of weird months, but we really shouldn’t be surprised by that. Good progress for what it is, of course, but I had a real moment of discontent and clarity after finishing drafting last week’s blog and getting it ready to post, because, well…this project’s gotten stale. Long time readers, if there even are any of those, will likely have caught on that, like, nothing really new happens week to week. Some weeks I do a little better than others, some weeks I have more or different stuff going on, week in and week out, without much to say on it. I’ve slowly drained topics to talk about on this blog over time, until I gave up on writing content blogs entirely in favor of just these recaps with the plan of covering topics ‘when I had something to talk about.’ Which has gotten rarer and rarer. There’s a reason for this, I think.
And that reason is that, well, I think I’ve gotten to the level of Spanish that I want. There’s long been talk on this blog of me getting around to brushing up my speaking ability until I can talk fluently, with vague plans of starting that ‘at some point,’ like I’m suddenly going to turn into the sort of outgoing, gregarious person that enjoys struggling through speaking to other people. I barely enjoy speaking to other people in English, doing it in Spanish has never sounded fun to me, I’ve never really had the desire to do it, and I’ve just been waiting for such a time when those things changed, ostensibly because I understood the written and spoken language well enough to where talking in it felt just as natural as English. And the truth is, that day just isn’t coming.
What I want to use the languages for, is to do things like watch things like Kiwillius or El Labirinto del Fauno and understand them, or read Los Diarios de Motocicleta in the original language. I can do those things, and do them regularly, and for a long while it’s been within the confines of “the project” in service to getting better at Spanish. But, like, better for what? I can do the thing I want to do with the language, so long as I can maintain it, that’s what I’m looking for, and at this point, like, I could just stop treating my Spanish watching and reading as on-the-clock time and just engage with it in my day to day life as it comes up, which is something I do a little, but often hold off in favor of waiting for it to “count,” but that’s an easy switch for me to make if I decided to. So long as it doesn’t fall entirely by the wayside, I shouldn’t lose what I know at this point, I know too damn much, and keeping it fresh by continuing to use it ought to be totally fine for maintaining it.
Which leads to the question of what to do and where to go now. And the answer to that question would be either to quietly retire the blog, or to go on to a new language as my main focus. And while I have lightly considered the former, the plan was always the latter, and I think it’s time to set up for that.
Which, as is clear from discussing plans in the week’s recap, isn’t an immediate thing. My biggest concern before switching languages was that I really want to finish Harrow la Novena before taking on something new. I have been enjoying the series and being 2/3rds of the way through the book only to drop it sounds awful. As such, I want to at least finish it before diving into anything else majorly reading-heavy with my new language, which is gonna be Japanese. Or maybe German, if I end up getting too much of a cold sweat when starting in on the former, lol, Japanese really intimidates me. But, I would like to learn both of those at some point if I can, and am planning on going with Japanese first if my brain permits it. That’s going to involve going back several steps from my usual routines and start at square one. Enough so that there really isn’t going to be anything all that reading-heavy for a bit, not while I get through the earliest babysteps with the language of Duolingo.
Thus my plan is that I’m going to finish cleaning up the backlog of Kiwillius episodes I have, as mentioned in the week recap and keep up with reading, so status quo for the next few days. Once my backlog is tapped, my time learning Spanish is being retired, and it’ll be time for Japanese. I’ll continue to read Harrow la Novena and report on it up until that switch, but then after that, it’s becoming purely a leisure activity along with all my other focus on Spanish stuff, and this blog’s going to switch gears as I start up Japanese. I may have more things to say and will end up engaging with this blog more, depending on new observations and things I’m thinking about with Japanese (or German, in which case I might have some things to say about noping out of a language that makes your head spin too hard, lol), as well as considering what happens with my engagement with Spanish media when I’m not focused on learning it anymore.
Overall, I think this is the right move for me, and I think I’m going to overall be happy with making this switch, not only because it’s exciting to be working on something new, but also because this blog was starting to feel like a chore for me. Writing this out and discussing plans isn’t a chore at all, though, and it’s nice to feel sorta energized about this again.
Anyway, that’ll do for this one, until the next one when I might be dipping my toes into a brand new journey, TTFN.
Fumbling Toward Fluent 