So how’s everyone feeling for the Winter challenge? It’s almost here, with the new year and all! I was thinking we could set up the thread a few days before starting just to give time for potentially new participants to see, what do you peeps think?
Also, I’ve been giving it a bit of thought lately, about my last few posts. I’ve been going through a rough couple of weeks and I think that conditioned me heavily into trying to retreat again to the safe bubble. And it’s not that that’s bad or anything, in fact I need to take it very easy right now, but nonetheless I would also like to keep the nature of the challenge as a reading space. I’ll need to make sure not to neglect other aspects that I find important, but I would like to make reading a big part of my study again. Well, immersion in general, but still. I would like for this coming year to push my Japanese knowledge up a bit, especially my vocabulary.
I’ve been reading this thread recently, and it made me reflect. I have trouble with finding a purpose for my Japanese at the moment, and have for a while. I don’t really have any specific drive per se, not a specific goal I would like to achieve, no specific game or movie or anything I would like to comprehend. And while that is perfectly fine, I sometimes find myself lost in terms of direction. While I don’t really believe in motivation as a reliable force to achieve things, It’s hard to keep oneself motivated with no goals in mind. I believe in healthy discipline and habit as more reliable, but it’s also very significant for me when I break either, and when that happens I find that having motivation is beneficial to get back on the horse again and push through. I’m not exactly sure at times of what drives me to learn Japanese, to be perfectly honest, other than a general sense of genuine curiosity and interest for Japanese culture as a whole. But there’s always this lingering feeling of wanting to learn and understand more of it, and frustration when I sense a lack of progress. And I think it’s easy to feel a lack of progress when you have no ground to make comparisons, no clear “before and after”. I think completing goals in that regard is nice to see that you are indeed moving forward. I think that’s a big part of why I like this challenge.
So yeah, all of this is to say, I think I’m in one of those lows at the moment, so forgive my venting for a bit 
. I’m looking forward to next challenge, hopefully I start feeling a bit better soon and I have more energy to give my Japanese a nice bump this year.
I hope you all had a great Christmas and ate many tasty dishes! 