Maybe that’s where my tortur- interviewers got it from.
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Yeah its a famous tactic in sales or just in speaking in general if you want to practice being more convincing or persuasive. Apparently, if you can sell someone an everday simple object convincingly then you will be able to speak persuasively in more complicated scenarios. Idk I just know ur reference made me laugh so I enjoyed!
Move to Japan.
I made it partway down that first line and my brain went “hahahahaha no”. Too advanced. And that’s fine.
Despite making it to Level 60 of WK and having pretty good sight recognition for many common kanji, I’m pretty much illiterate in Japanese. I can read recognise the names of most of the sekitori in the Grand Sumo App (goal achieved) but I can’t read the match summaries underneath them very well (and there’s no match summaries in English). I slacked hard with reading.
I started out partly wanting to understand more of the Japanese language sumo coverage, but also (egotistically) wanting to learn one really insanely difficult major world language. I put so much time and energy into Duolingo and Bunpro and WK over the last three years or so until it got too frustrating - having 200+ review days from forgetting 50% of the material being reviewed.
And the frustration sounds similar to yours, if not identical. I was in that 「頑張りなきゃ!!!」 mindset for WK, and it did turn into 「畜生！どうしてその言葉をalways忘れた！大嫌いよ！」but learning any language is a means to an end, and that means is intrinsically linked to other language communities and what they’re up to. I did way too much WK and Bunpro upfront without doing enough reading to synthesise all that good knowledge together.
You mentioned going onto social media and being painfully self conscious about making grammatical mistakes. Maaaaake theeeeeem. Make a lot of them. Set out to make mistakes, even. Stride boldly up to that anxiety about making mistakes, look it squarely in the eye and poke it in the eye for all the fun it has cost you. Don’t be a perfectionist 海人 and don’t worry whether you 魚t.
And I sense you are pushing yourself harder and harder, maybe because that constant sense of dissatisfaction with your progress gives you a sense of purpose? I don’t know. But whipping yourself raw with your own unmet expectations isn’t fun. Tell that feeling to shut its mouth. It is a filthy rotten liar and a pernicious mindset. That’s not to say improvement or progress is unimportant. But it’s never important enough that you should place no value at all in what you’ve achieved so far.
You have ten years of Japanese under your belt. What you’ve achieved is still phenomenal. Unthinkable for me, even. (I’m not even off Chapter One of 「よつばと」yet.) So please turn your gaze away from the 山 you can’t climb at least once in a while, so you can pose triumphantly on the 岡 that are no problem for you anymore. Let that accumulated knowledge breathe a little.
And while you’re pottering around on one of those old hills, revisiting what got you excited to learn Japanese in the first place, maybe you’ll rediscover the thing that will propel you - not drag you, not shame you, but propel you with renewed curiosity and energy - up to the next mountain, ready to chew it down to the size of a hill like some kind of very persistent beaver.
And that inspiration, when it comes, will be like a little bird. Shy, maybe easy to miss but for a very familiar song. It may help to accept the bird might not exist, and might never come, even though that’s a painful thought. Or it just might not come for a while. Reconcile with all those feelings. Because it’s the kind of bird that is easier to hear when your brain is not desperately shouting「鳥さま～、どこ～」.
I don’t know if any of this helps or if it makes any sense. I hope you at least enjoyed the fish puns.
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I haven’t read all the replies here, so forgive me if I’m repeating something someone has already said - but I totally vibe with you! I, too, have been studying Japanese formally for about 8ish years and feel I should be better. I’m a heritage learner, which can make the “should be better” stuff even worse.
That being said though, everyone learns at their own pace and in their own order, especially when it comes to languages. I was recently diagnosed with a learning disability that explains a LOT about why I can’t seem to absorb language in the same order and at the same pace as other people. I’m not here to tell you to get checked out for an LD, but just that language is SO complicated and brains all work differently. There is no should.
I, for example, SUCK (LD, remember) at the “easy stuff” like remembering words or plugging grammatical forms into sentences. But I’m really, really good (flip-side of the LD) at making associations, context queues, and mimicking how people actually speak.
This means I stink at traditional (especially lower-level) language classes but am super functional when actually in Japan. It also means it’s taken me way more time to get to where I am in wanikani.
Basically, be easy on yourself and remember that brains are wired for linguistics, but that they don’t always work the way you think they “ought” to. You probably have strengths you don’t even know about because they come so easily to you. That, and even native speakers of Japanese find their own language hard. Mistakes are a-ok! Good luck.
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Don’t worry, I think is the best thing to say. I’m still on level one. If you still have the interest and desire to learn, then how fast you go isn’t the issue, it’s the journey that’s important. Perhaps going slower can be more beneficial; you can take stock of things more fully.
Sadly, I lost interest in Japanese over time and Wanikani came along too late to save it. I really don’t like kanji, and long term exposure to the more negative aspects of Japanese society and culture (in particular the all pervasive paranoia about everything) has pretty much killed the enthusiasm I had years ago. By the sound of it, you still have that enthusiasm. Cherish it! Keep it close, and be like Basho on the road north, observing and noting everything. And remember, Matsushima is waiting at the end of your journey.
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Seems like you are really hard on yourself. Remember to have fun too! At some point you have to stop thinking of yourself as a learner and start thinking of yourself as a practitioner.
I recommend posting of a Japanese conversation site, or facebook group, and video chat with a few people in Japanese until you find someone HILARIOUS. And then just enjoy talking to them in broken Japanese if need be.
Stop making Japanese so much work! I specifically chose my tutor because I like talking to him.
Lots of good answers here. I’d just like to highlight a few points.
That’s the spirit! 
That reminds me of this quote:
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)
I think this is the ghost that haunts people, in many aspects of life, not just language learning. Other common ghosts for language learners are “native”, “near native”, and the infamous “fluency”. Not to say that these concepts don’t have their importance, but I believe language learners would benefit enormously from setting them aside and focusing more on other aspects of the language learning process. Our society is obsessed with the idea of a “perfect” linear process with well-defined beginning, middle, and end points. But so much in life is completely different, with multiple starts and stops, with seasons, with highs and lows, with countless repetitions, with no proper end. On this subject, here’s a small bit from an excellent comic adaption of a quote by Isaac Asimov about a lifetime of learning:
“There’s only this one universe and only this one lifetime to try to grasp it. And while it is inconceivable that anyone could grasp more than a tiny portion of it… they can at least do that much.”
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