Still reading every day, at least a bit. Midway through Volume 10 of 無職転生. It’s been kind of a slog ever since volume 8, but 10 in particular has been uninteresting for the most part other than a couple of tidbits here and there. Some things were just plain dumb, to the point of annoyance.
I’ll keep it up though, I’ve been going at it nonstop for 31 days so far according to Kindle! And that’s because I read the paperbacks of volumes 1-8, so it’s probably been around 2-3 months so far.
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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! 
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Yeah! Let’s get ready and set it up soon so more people can join 
@windupbird Would you like to post the winter challenge thread? 
If not, I could post it, or someone else if they’d like to go for it
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I got a pile of stuff to read, so I definitely need to commit again next year.
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I’ve missed this place, so I’m looking forward to starting the Winter Challenge! 
This time I’m gonna try and keep better notes of my reading so, hopefully, I can learn better. I felt that quite often in the past challenge I’d sometimes glance by a kanji if I wasn’t sure on the reading and just went with what I thought the reading was rather than looking it up and confirming. I’ll try and be more diligent with my reading this time around!
Also, gonna take a note from your book and try gaming in Japanese. I finished Nioh 2 awhile back with Japanese audio but all the text in English, and I’ve been wanting to play it on some of the higher difficulties so gonna try it with JP audio & text because obviously I enjoy suffering. (I don’t think I’ll do this every day like the reading though because I think my brain might explode).
Don’t worry about venting, it sounds like you’ve got a plan though, I’ve found going back to the Safe-Zone helps a lot, like it recements your foundations.
We’ll be here to give you ganbarremotivation!
With large amounts of Tanuki of course
Hope you (and everyone here) had a great holiday!! 
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I am already looking forward to the new thread. This month I was pretty busy and didn’t manage to read every day. But 2022 I will go all out and read much more than this year. I need to bring my backlog down a little bit.
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I’m happy to do it again! I’ll try to post it a bit later today so we can have a few days for people to see it before it starts
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Yay! 
I’ll leave it to you 
yoroshiku!
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Winter challenge thread is live!
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