ThisIsMuki

The funny thing about fitting things into life is that when you don't have enough time, you say you'll do things when you have time.

And then when you have time, there's no motivation to do anything because there's plenty of time.

That's me right now.

I have a heap of time, and for a while I was studying Japanese quite intently. I was one of those (throws up in mouth) weebs that liked to think he knew basic Japanese for quite some time because he studied it in high school for a year.

I learned my Hiragana, my Katakana, and a bunch of random phrases, and every time I went to Japan I'd struggle (unsurprisingly) and then have a sudden renewed interest in studying again once I came home... and do nothing about it.

About a year ago, I made an earnest effort to learn Japanese “for real this time!” and it went better than expected. I (gasp) learned the most basic 1,500 Kanji. I read through grammar guides. I could actually form somewhat broken sentences and when I did go back to Japan, I could struggle on by with throwing nouns and verbs out there that might vaguely help in someone being able to understand me. And then I started extending my vocabulary even further.

It was great. And soul crushing.

Because it forced me to come to terms with the fact that all of my high school Japanese, memorising the lyrics to whatever anime theme song, and whatever else I'd somehow picked up by watching TV — all of it meant diddly squat. There is so much to learn and I'd barely scratched the surface of it.

Not only that, but as someone who spent almost two decades as a communications professional and set a high bar for his command of English, struggling to read even the basic easy version of Japanese news felt like I was a toddler babbling. Except, I did actually meet a toddler in Seria who I barely understood because he was speaking slowly, so I guess that's giving myself too much credit.

I guess that fits my nature to absolutely want to punch down my own accomplishments as well.

At some point, I missed my daily study. And then a few days became a week. Or two. And suddenly it's been six months. So really, I've only had six months of real study.

Now I'm having trouble jumping back on this horse. So much so, that my current goal is to just open my vocabulary deck and look at it for five minutes. It's been about a week since I set that and I've achieved it just once. It was horrifying to see that I remembered just about nothing.

But hey, on the bright side, I've created a blog as a distraction.

Maybe I'll look at the deck tomorrow. Maybe I'll update and see.

(It's 先延ばし by the way.)