First post and a bit rambly, sorry in advance 笑
LEVEL 10!
Welp, it’s not much yet but after studying kanji daily — aside from a 4th of July camping trip with friends — for the last 3 months I’ve reached Level 10 on WaniKani. やった！
Now admittedly, I maaaaay have dragged out level 3 for a couple weeks longer than I needed to maximize free trial time and attempt to be economic, but I still get that feeling that I’m going too slow every now and then. It’s a strange feeling, seeing as I am probably going harder at it than most learners, using both WaniKani, Anki, and a mobile Kanji study app that teaches how to write them, and yet it catches me all the same.
My Journey
To give a little more background into my journey for those curious, I started around 7 or 8 years ago during Duolingo’s boom on a bit of a whim, but only really made it through kana, basic grammar, and whatever N5 kanji Duolingo would throw at me without warning. For a long time I listened to Japanese music, watched anime, and occasionally attempted (poorly) to talk to Japanese speakers in VRChat. It was a very unproductive start that lasted up until December of last year where I finally made the commitment to lock in on this thing and really try to learn it.
After that decision, I began regularly listening to beginner podcast, watching Japanese YouTube, going on VRChat to speak with natives for several hours each day, among other tools. I went to Japan from late February to Early march and my skill in the language was enough to make the trip more enjoyable, but also left me with even more motivation to improve, which drove me to finally take the jump into actually trying to learn grammar and kanji formally in early April.
That finally brings me here, knowing about 500 kanji that I can read and write with a respectable degree of comfort and confidence, more ability to speak with and comprehend others, and somehow even more motivation than before. I expected a sudden burnout to make me crash and burn but nothing of the sort has happened miraculously. I am about 60% through the N3 Jouyou kanji and excited to begin learning N2 hopefully soon.
Looking Forward
From here perhaps it’s time I really take the dive albeit scary into reading. If I’ve learned anything from this it was that kanji isn’t so scary, and I wish I started it much sooner in my journey. Reading will probably be the same.
Thanks for reading my messy ramble, I’ll see you all at Level 20 soon 
For anybody that likes numbers and statistics as much as I do, here’s my current wkstats graph as well:
