Let’s do a quick numbers dive and look back on the week.
- Reading: 3% of Harrow la Novena, ~60 minutes
- Watching/Listening: 1 episode of Kiwillius, ~60 minutes
- Speaking: reading out loud, ~30 minutes
Wednesday 12/08
- Reading: 2% of Harrow la Novena, ~60 minutes
- Watching/Listening: 2 episodes of Kiwillius, ~60 minutes
- Speaking: reading out loud, ~30 minutes
Thursday 12/09
- Reading: 3% of Harrow la Novena, ~60 minutes
- Watching/Listening: 2 episodes of Kiwillius, ~60 minutes
- Speaking: reading out loud, ~30 minutes
Friday 12/10
- Reading: 2% of Harrow la Novena, ~60 minutes
- Watching/Listening: 2 episodes of Kiwillius, ~60 minutes
- Speaking: reading out loud, ~30 minutes
Saturday 12/11
- Watching/Listening: 1 episode of Kiwillius, ~30 minutes
Sunday 12/12
- Watching/Listening: 1 episode of Kiwillius, ~30 minutes
Monday 12/13
- Reading: 3% of Harrow la Novena, ~60 minutes
- Watching/Listening: 1 episode of Kiwillius, 1 episode of Plano de Juego, ~60 minutes
- Speaking: reading out loud, ~30 minutes
- Total reading: 1/10 books read, 300 minutes
- Total watching/listening: 11 YouTube episodes watched, 360 minutes
- Total speaking: reading out loud, 150 minutes
Total Time: 11 hours 0 minutes
So this week’s a little special in that it’s marking the “end” of my focus on Spanish for this blog, at least as the regular featured language. I tried to time it in such a way that I worked through the last of the backlog I’d built up for ongoing Kiwillius videos and mostly succeeded, getting a final hour’s worth of listening content to cap things off on Monday’s workday and be all the way caught up. Timing on Harrow la Novena was less elegant, as I’ve still got about a fifth of the book to go, but that’s okay, as my switch to Japanese is not going to have the same dedicated reading time as Spanish has had, and it won’t for a while, as there is going to be a decidedly sharp learning curve on the basics there. While I’m digging through the beginningest of the beginning stuff with Japanese, I’m going to still have my built-in reading time at work, which I will use to read the rest of Harrow, just as a thing to do, and once it’s done I’ll get to some leisure reading that’s only available in English that I’ve been putting off for too long.
Closing the book here on Spanish as my learning focus feels a little surreal, as it’s ending sort of with a whimper in some ways, but I think that’s just because there isn’t really any sense of finality to it, as something like this never actually ends. I’m gonna keep using and learning Spanish, more or less, just in my day to day. I follow plenty of youtubers and twitter folks who work in Spanish and will continue to enjoy their content and interact the same as I have been, just without an eye on ‘time spent’ with it, rather it now being something in the overall list of ‘stuff I can watch if it catches my eye,’ and what language it’s in doesn’t really matter. That’s what my goal from the start was with Spanish, so I’m there and I can just do that now. So, well, I’mma do that now.
I am overall very pleased with my time and effort on this, even if I never rose to the occasion of becoming some gregarious extrovert who talked to all the native speakers until I blended in among them, but I wouldn’t really want to be that person, anyway, sounds pretty exhausting if you ask me. I am happy with where things are here and am pleased to move onto the next volume in my language learning adventures. Next stop, Japanese Duolingo here I come, time to learn basic grammar and letters. I’m frightened.
That’ll do for this one, join us next week as Japanese kicks into high gear. TTFN.
Fumbling Toward Fluent 