What helped me tremendously was learning vocabulary and grammar. For vocabulary I just started on the core 10k (not that I’m anywhere near having worked through it by now, I think I’m about 2500 words in?) and for grammar I just went by JLPT order, all the while just keeping WaniKani going at a steady pace, but not necessarily as my main focus.
Once you feel a bit comfortable with the language, start consuming. Read simple news articles and stuff. I watched subtitled VTuber clips and tried to catch streams where I could - even if you understand only a few words and grammatical constructs, that reinforces them, and you get more comfortable around hearing Japanese. The same goes for reading, really. I prefer manga over simple news articles, but use whatever keeps you interested and motivated.
Also, just try to write. We have a Japanese Sentence A Day Challenge thread where you can just write whatever you feel like and not worry about being judged for poor Japanese or anything. I spend quite some time in there just reading through stuff, and when I see something I can comment on I usually try to offer some suggestions (and end up typing out a small essay of explanations). It’s a good way to learn, and active use of a language also improves your passive language skills (i.e. reading and listening).
I’m now at a point where I can comfortably read shounen/shoujo manga as long as they have furigana (many do) and I have a dictionary, and I can catch the gist of what goes on in streams as long as the streamer doesn’t talk too fast and the vocab doesn’t get too complicated, as well as have some conversations in written Japanese in the aforementioned thread, and I’ve been at it seriously for… I think a year or so? So your two year goal seems very attainable depending on what you mean by “reasonable”.
EDIT: also
1000x this. You’ll find a bunch of stuff you don’t recognise and can’t make sense of, especially early on. That’s okay. Focus on the stuff you do understand and work from there to understand just a little bit more than before you started.
EDIT 2 - ELECTRIC BOOGALOO:
Also don’t be afraid to shift your focus every now and again. You may find you can look up words but don’t know grammatical constructs - that means it’s time to shift your focus from vocab to grammar. You may find the opposite, that you know how to recognise what function a word plays and where the word boundaries are, but you have to look up every other word - that means you know enough vocab to focus on grammar for a bit.
And honestly, don’t neglect kanji, but… especially early on it’s really not the most sensible focus to have for practical use, IMO. A lot of the resources useful to you are going to have furigana, and you’re going to recognise a lot of the words over time even if you don’t technically know the kanji separately. Feels weird to say that on the WaniKani forum, but… it is what it is.