Oh boy, starting a blog on a new-to-me platform!
My name is Manda, and I’m one of many people out there trying their best to learn Japanese.
Over the years I’ve started and stopped too many times to count. I guess stopped might not be the best word, but I would have periods of absolute stagnancy and feeling burnt out. I would still enjoy immersing myself in native material but would get frustrated quickly with what seemed like a complete lack of progress.
I was trying to go all in on Japanese every day. And for awhile, it was easy to do that. I worked from home and had a fear of the outside world anyway. Being able to stay in and focus on Japanese in between the things I needed to do everyday seemed like a dream. But that exact thing would get me frustrated. All this time spent actively studying and I’m still not able to understand as much as I thought I would?!
I had way more problems going on than just feeling frustrated with Japanese. Well, I still have those problems, but I had them before too! My biggest issue was trying to balance the intensity of learning so much Japanese a day vs trying to work on the parts of myself that made me feel bad. I was struggling with PTSD, anxiety, depression, and all the fun that comes along with those mental health issues. I was struggling so much, but…trying to ignore it. If I could just focus on Japanese, if I could just feel like I could win at something in my life, I would finally feel content, right?
My life is a bit different now than it was even just earlier this year. I’m still struggling with a lot of things, but I don’t want to have such a love/hate relationship with Japanese because of feeling like “if I’m not going all in every single moment of every day, does it even matter? Will I ever be fluent because I’m not dedicating my life to learning Japanese so intensely?”. I want to enjoy my journey of learning again, instead of being so anxious about The Ultimate End Goal.
And for that, I’ve started up a journey to get to 10,000 sentences. A goal within the journey, but not the end of the journey. 10,000 seems like such a magical number, but it’s really just….it’s like each sentence is a fight with an enemy. And understanding something new in each sentence gives you that exp you need to become stronger. The goal for each new sentence is to have it contain something new or difficult. Something that my gear is okay for, but still slightly under-leveled. That may seem silly, but after raiding in FFXIV in the past I find it hard not to think of things in terms of video games. Makes it more fun that way too!
And that’s exactly it! I want to have fun. Discipline is so important but maaaan is life too short. If you can make a part of your life fun, do it! That line of thinking is where I’m at now. I love video games. I love books! I’m even starting to watch more anime, which I wasn’t ever really a huge fan of. I was worried I wouldn’t be taken seriously. But quite frankly, that is silly! I’m tired of being held back. I’m tired of holding myself back. This seems so dramatic for a language learning blog. I just feel like I’ve regained a passion that was dimmed for so long.
Anyway! If you’re seeing this in the early stages of this blog, it’s probably nothing spectacular yet. Might not ever be. But I would really like to share parts of my journey, even if I’m only typing into the void.
I’ll be tracking my progress of 10,000 sentences through Anki. I’ll share some of the more difficult sentences here and try to break them down, as well as showing my progress over time. I also plan on working on some video game subs2srs decks for myself, so that’ll be fun immersing time and potentially new sentences to collect!
I’ll be doing my best, so I hope all you language-learners out there reading this will too! I’m rooting for us all!
学ぶマンダ 