Bad news hit me lately so just been sorta struggling to maintain streaks, let alone study.
This thread’s always a motivator, so might end up doing a bit more after I close out of this.
Just, yeah, life, I guess.

I feasted, nay, engorged myself in Japanese, to the detriment of my Spanish and Irish. I’m still doing my Spanish, but it’s a drop in the ocean of what I used to do. Realized today I’m probably hella depressed, but I guess it is coming to be in waves? I guess despite my constant efforts, I don’t feel like I’m getting anywhere in my languages, so that doesn’t help. Feel sort of like, what’s the point? You know. Like I like learning the languages, and I want to be good at them someday, but my motivation is in the swanny.

Japanese is still getting tackled. Thinking about ditching Duolingo entirely for Lingonaut but also not sure when it’ll have Spanish done, so have to wait on that. Irish is seeing a bit more hope these days as the app Sionnach which I was referred, it had a schism where one of the owners apparently went mad and ejected a lot of the workers on it, so now they’ve diverted and are making a newer, ground up Irish learning app. Called Madra Teanga, and are also open sourcing it, as well as going to get proper native speech, such as Munster, and Connacht and Ulster dialects. Basically in the pre-planning stage at the moment, but oddly enough more optimistic than anything I’ve seen so far.

Anyway, yeah, that’s me.

Try out https://tadoku.org/japanese/en/free-books-en/ for free to use Japanese books. I’ve heard good things about this site. Books for all levels too.

I know new years in Japanese is 正月, but don’t know how to say happy new years despite so, also probably not going to try Spanish or Irish either just because languages do it all differently and I haven’t really gotten around to seasonal greetings yet, even birthdays for me have been hardly touched, so memory is vague.

I’ve gone absolutely ape shit diving into my languages. Doing well over an hour, maybe 2, of Japanese a day. Doing my vocab for Irish on Anki and Drops and also finally my Irish book arrived, so incorporate that and another book. AND also a friend of mine decided to pick up Irish recently, so I have that to also look forward to! And then next the Spanish. Felt like years since I’ve studied it properly, when it’s only been a week or two, and already things are clicking, so that’s also been quite motivating for me too. I want to push for a full hour in Spanish now too. A friend mentioned to me their office is looking for WFH translators for English-Spanish, so if I ever get a C1 credential, I could potentially chase after that as a job, which is hella neat.

That all being said though, the biggest disappointment of 2025 was looking at my languages through the eyes of a translation job. Pay can be quite poor despite the countless hours needed for such skills. So for me it’s best to enjoy the ride rather than work myself up for some overarching goal that might never happen (not that I’d give up, just that I might not get a translating job).

2026 is the year I go full send on all my studies. Including languages, maths, Blender and other courses. 2026 has been a complete shit year for me so far, so at least I can look forward to studying in the near and far future.

As I like to tell my friends, “I’m in my gitgud era”.

Crapped out for the holidays. Only scratching the very surface of apps to maintain streaks. After Xmas though I’ve gone crazy wild trying to dive back in. Ending up picking up 22 words a day in Japanese, and about 10 in Irish. Spanish still needs to be picked up proper, but out of all the languages I’m doing now, Spanish is by far the most demotivating.

Really wanting to push more Irish as I get into the new year. I find it depressing I’m Irish, lived here my whole life even, and don’t understand the language. Next to that, the language is actually dying off despite what our government says. So I’d like to strengthen the lifeline of the language by contributing to it.

Haven’t done Irish in a bit. Keeping up with Japanese though. Spanish is a bit hectic, but surviving a lot better than my Irish. Maths is completely fallen over and my reading habits are just standing there laughing at it.

Despite the lack of language effort, I’m reading a chapter a day, and despite reading a chapter a day it still feels like I haven’t even eaten part way into Lord of the Rings.

Japanese has seen better times, I was a bit skimpy on the vocab up until recently. Ended up knocking a 200 word a day pile down to 70. Spanish and Japanese see some sight of Busuu, bit of Duolingo, and a bit of Migaku. This all being said, there’s still not enough done. I genuinely feel like at this moment in time, I could do with hard copy physical books, not just apps, ironically though what would help my Irish a lot are apps that don’t suck like Duolingo or RosettaStone.

Time is however short, and I have no idea how I’d divide my attention per language, then again per activity for hard study. Life would be a lot easier with a teacher or some guided activity cheat sheet or something.

Despite my love for languages, and I’ve been doing this for like 2+ years, I still have no idea what the fuck I’m doing.

I’d try Spirit City: Lofi Sessions, Ithya: Magic Studies and Chill With You Lo-Fi Story in waves and not altogether. There’s probably a whole other bunch of software out there on Steam that’s similar but different, but these are the only ones I’ve managed to try fully.

The software on Linux is a bit buggy, the sounds on my machine go f-ways when I run Chill With You Lo-Fi Story, but only switched today so it’s possible it’s a me-issue.

Also the free route is still an option if you’re okay with using just youtube videos, the Lofi Girl channel has a pomodoro lofi video that I used to use before getting into the software side. I bought a bunch of these knowing I could just get free pomodoro tools elsewhere because I wanted the extra comfort/coziness that the games/apps provide.

Like for instance, this Lo-Fi Story game has the worst set of tools for studying compared to the other 2, but I’m still using it more because of the plot built into the game. And I guess the gated unlocks also keeps me going.

There was a Black Friday sale on not too long ago which is why I picked up the latest one, but the Winter Sale should be on soon if you’d rather wait to buy them then. They’re quite cheap at around 7 euro each (roughly) when on sale.

Doing an hour of Japanese (30 min study/vocab, 30 min listening practise), hour of Spanish (30 min study/vocab, 30 min listening practise), hour of Irish (full study), 30+ mins of maths and reading at least a chapter of a random book a day.

Sometimes I get really pooped though and can only manage 30 mins of JP then 30 mins of SP.

I woke up not too long ago but my spoons are already depleted from switching operating systems due to Windows constantly fucking with me, so there’s that.

Also have new study software from Steam, called “Chill With You Lo-Fi Story”, it’s not better for studying than Spirit City Lofi Sessions, but it has a story that progresses with more study, so I’m sticking with it for now until I can see the end of this girls journey.

Was feeling awful, but pushed myself to study! Glad I did.

I studied Japanese for around 2 to 2 and a half hours. Spanish for an hour. Maths for 20ish minutes. About 15 minutes of Irish. 23 Minutes of exercising (pushed much more than I usually do too), and am going to crash and burn in about 5 mins.

Recovered the day! I need to learn to deal with stress like this more.

Well done! You’re making me want to retry Spanish with the GF, I might try it once she wakes up later.

Been pushing hour long study sessions in to my Japanese as well as my Spanish and also doing 10-25 mins of maths a day, as well as exercising (cycling) for 20 mins a day all week. Been having a very hard day just today though and not sure I can make it today, but I’ll certainly try to.

… Also feel guilty about my Irish lately, it feels like out of all languages I should be learning, Irish should be one of them. I felt so guilty that I managed to make a few flashcards in Irish using one of those Irish dictionaries. But lord knows if it’ll actually go anywhere. It’s hard enough to muster the strength to do an hour in Japanese, let alone an hour in Spanish, let alone the other stuff too. But not learning Irish still kills me at times. In part because people keep saying how terrible Duolingo ends up being but the Duolingo Irish learners are still leagues ahead of me too. I’m Irish, born and lived here my whole life, yet can’t speak a word of it. I feel like I’m sort of a disgrace.

I often find that when days are good, the best I can feel is when I’m studying. But days where it’s hard, I can’t study to relax, and I can’t find other ways to relax besides studying, my mind is constantly racing, and I can’t watch or play anything and I enter this phase where I’m constantly trying to do something but ruminate on the bad instead, then have to disengage with the distractions since it’s not distracting enough.

So that’s been at me today again. Really wishing I had a different brain, I get so panicky like today for the dumbest of reasons and I was doing really good up until now too. I’ll try study after this post, and then if today is successful, I’ll post a small update of how the day went. I think today is just a day where I need to rough it out and learn how to rough it out.

Sorry for the wall of text.

Hopefully a good update soon.

The first genuine time I tried to speak Spanish with my GF she outright refused to speak back to me in Spanish, no hangups with her, she just didn’t engage me with it and instead spoke English. That was also a downer for me, but at the same time I realized I could say a basic few words despite never doing it before, so at least that was a positive.

Progress recently, scraped by quite a few days, doing bare minimum, due to various factors like stress and illness and more stress. Only today was I able to study the full 30 mins in Japanese and Spanish. Still not over the hurdles life threw at me save the sickness, but at least I’m on the horse again for now. Or at least today. No idea what tomorrow might throw at me, so hoping for something less serious.

Today managed to be with the GF a fair amount too, managed to do a full 180 flashcards on MaruMori and still have another 20 to go. Then I spent a while on Duolingo and Migaku for Spanish. I’ve completed both languages at 30 mins a piece, but still don’t feel satisfied. Also to add, I still have yet to finish the last of the N5 off, so should probably aim to do a few more of those before pushing for other stuff on the Japanese front. Down to about 15 cards now, but I tend to do 10 cards a day based on N5 then 10 cards on a random assortment of N4,N3,N2,N1 levels jointly together.

Might end up going back to Dreaming in Spanish later, as well as that Japanese site for videos… cijapanese, that’s the site.
Otherwise I guess I could dive into Irish again, but I’d feel easier just focusing on these 2 languages for now, as I’m still trying to get into the swing of things again. I was doing so well for months then life happens, I guess that’s just life. Still. Such a bummer.

Anyway, back to the grind.

Completely cratered one day, then the next I got sick, so there’s been a trickle of study ongoing instead of a flow. The last 2 days I’ve really come back on track though, more so than I usually recover. Already doing hours worth of study as soon as I wake up, but I think in part it’s due to the study sessions I have with my GF, we both don’t talk and just study on our prospective projects, and it’s working out quite well.

Spanish I’m using Migaku these days, but I feel it’s also not the best, since the courses you can take from it is like… Learn creatures or colours, and a lot of these words just seem like words I’d hardly use in English let alone Spanish. But I do them so I have something to do. I might end up using the Migaku addon and switch to Vivaldi to use it, and just pick up words from YouTube or Netflix and the like and add it to my manual Spanish lessons that way.

Japanese haven’t really done anything too strange. Doing a bit more Busuu courses these days compared to what I usually do, that goes for Spanish Busuu courses too. Again Busuu helps clear up some concepts that Duolingo left for dead in obscure tips sections. Edit: also, just remembered. I’m about 30 words off of finishing the complete N5 word list, so that’s about either 6-14 days of study, depending. So that’ll be a milestone.

Still however not happy with what course selections I have for Spanish, despite mixing a weave of Duolingo, Busuu and Migaku. Might end up just getting a physical textbook and reading through it to make it feel like I have a more complete understanding.

Still keeping up with the maths, but only managing 15 mins a day, which is more than enough for just starting I think. Plan on ramping up maths at some point in the future to a whole hour a day but probably not for a good few months still.

Will probably touch the Irish again in a short while today. Managed to clear a lot of todays logs so have more time now. Also plan on exercising later too, I’ve also picked that up recently as well.

The cold weather is very nice, it’s actually a motivator for study. I get to keep warm from the cold and study and drink tea and it’s a very relaxing experience.

Doing my 30 mins a day on Spanish and Japanese. Doing more on Migaku these days for my Spanish, not sure if it’s helping as much as something like MM flashcards, but I guess it’s decent enough. Yesterday was actually pretty hectic for me, didn’t get to do the full workload yesterday, but I am noticing I am doing more maths again. So there’s that. Watching some Japanese videos too, an odd day I get an hour of Japanese instead of 30 mins, with 30 mins just being listening practice. Hard to say the same for my Spanish. And haven’t touched my Irish for over a month at this point, (I assume).

My GF is planning for a no-gaming day that we both do at the same time, so we can focus on things we need to do more. She’s decided on it being a Tuesday. So from now on we’re going to try stop gaming on the Tuesday, however the caveat there is I still will run Spirit City: Lofi Sessions, since it counts as a game on Steam, but it’s a tool I use everyday to help me study. Even having it in the background playing lofi music ends up encouraging me to study more, since I equate lofi with study these days. So just having it on gently in the background is a motivator for me through the day. So things like that where apps act as games but are really study/productive tools we can get to use. I normally use Minecraft for my journaling, since in the game I want to build a functioning library and want to have actual books for it, so I can log on Minecraft at the end of the day to journal then close out of it, so that’s another thing.

Sleep has been massively negatively affected, and I still feel far from on the horse, but at least I’m not entrenched in the mud completely.

Grammar is always a pain point. Been doing Japanese for a few years now, but I always mix up things like no, ni and he (not all with each other), nvm ha and ga.

Late to this weeks entry, but my study is going okay. Few days full hour each, few days just doing 5 mins. Been more on the 30 minute mark though. Maths suffered greatly, and this week has just been hectic and had really bad news a while back, so not in the greatest of spirits. Still, managing to do a bit in each day. I actually put off new lessons for my Japanese and just did reviews the whole time, some days the pile still surpasses 100 despite giving it my all each day. I guess it’s just like that at times.

Doing new lessons for Spanish using Migaku, new app to me, but most of those words I already knew, or could tell due to similar sounds to English. Elephant and Giraffe and others are all very similar. My GF’s native language is Spanish, so sometimes she ends up saying words like these but in Spanish, so I know what she’s saying, and I now totally understand the confusion. There’s a lot of words out there that need more attention than just knowing what it looks like but being able to pronounce them. It’ll be many years before I can manage my Spanish as well as she manages her English. Also, she’s keen on picking up Japanese too, so we might both go a combined Duolingo/MaruMori/Busuu route, along with other resources.

Now if I could also just convince her to join me in my future Lojban and Irish studies…

Sorry to hear, energy levels are still hard to get right despite maturing/aging, it’s one of those things you can’t really ever get right 100% of the time, even up till your 70s. Hope you feel well enough to start again soon.

A good teacher can make a huge difference in your life. I had okay teachers but none of them made me go mad for learning like I am now for languages and such. I think some random person on IRC did that and I don’t even know their name anymore.

You get that study high after a good day, it’s very worthwhile just for that, lol.

Honestly, I think one thing nailing me down lately is sleep. As soon as I get on track of that, and end up being less tired in the day, I’ll be able for more. Body needs adjusting.

Did a 50 minute lesson of math yesterday, I’m enjoying maths more than I have done when I was in school. The test I did the other day, I’d use to crack down and melt from anxiety in attempting tests years ago. But that’s becoming less and less of an issue the more I expose myself to questions and tests, the less the punch they have. Still not over the fear fully yet, but doing a lot better. Also mind, I’m pushing myself into this direction too, with no other assistance from anyone else so the climb is going to be harder. But more worth it in the end I hope.

There’s books with audio, but I lost my credentials to download them again, so all I have is the book. Also it doesn’t come with any workbook, and the online resources for the book cost a lot per month. I’d probably pay for that in the next coming while, once I settle into more of a deeper and more structured routine. Again Irish is the hardest for me to get into, so again, waiting until I’m more prepared to chew into it.

The grammar is a bit more hand-holdy and ordered in a way that’s a lot easier to digest. They have SRS for grammar, as well as specific grammar drills, games, base vocab SRS and achievements and yearly wrap ups. Basically you are getting multiple language features for the price of a single app. Things like WaniKani are good, but you pay for a certain amount that MaruMori covers and that and then some. So value wise it already beats out WK, and tons of people love WK for it’s SRS. It’s basically best value where you get most other app features in a centralized app. It’s not perfect, but it just has a lot of value baked in that’s hard to find elsewhere. I think Renshu is the nearest thing, and even then the grammar lessons on that are somewhat lacking by comparison.

I use paid services more often than not, I’d love to learn without having to pay, but if a service is good I’ll use it. The only language I can even think of to learn for free would be Lojban, and that’s because it’s so niche there’s literally no demand for it, so there’s no products for it. Maybe after a next language cycle when I feel I’m just going to maintain my already learnt languages, I’ll cruise on into Lojbanistan.

I’m not sure how I am these days. I mean I’m studying, but I don’t feel like I’m doing enough still. Mind, I’ve been only doing 30 minutes a day of Japanese and 30 mins of Spanish, so it’s not my usual hour each, which is probably why it doesn’t feel as fleshed out as I want. I’m sort of not exactly in the right spirits where I can feel like I’m on top of things yet, despite the efforts.

Also, really happy I’m managing the 30 minutes of maths. I had a test today and 70% passed it, with 3 of the questions I had no idea what they were talking about, so I’ll take what I get.

Next to this, still haven’t touched my Irish. Again it’s sort of hard to start it when what you are given are very meager learning tools for the language. Books only work so well without the spoken word, and apps that do spoken word, have terrible learning practices, so it’s bad on both ends. I keep ranting about this because it’s constantly a source of contention for me. I learn Japanese on MaruMori, the SRS they have on that app makes all the other apps I’ve used be put to shame, including Anki. I seriously wish there was more out there like MM but for other languages. Literally feel so spoilt using this for Japanese. It’s not perfect still, definitely way not enough practice lessons for grammar and such. And their streak system is very unforgiving. But somehow I’ve only missed a single day in the past 340+ days, so I have that going for me.

I’m hyped to learn more, it’s just, when push comes to shove, it’s hard to have the energy in me to do more, I guess? It’s hard knowing what my problem is exactly. Just off I guess.

I thought I heard something about this too not too long ago. I might keep my head up and look for something feasible. I’d love if they released a Pokemon Blue in Irish. Doubt that exists though. Maybe though.