Back in the Game: Language Goals, Life Updates, and a Fresh Start

Back to learning,sharing...and rambling too!

Image created with DALL-E 3.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I needed quite a break.

I was burned out on all ends and had a lot of personal stuff to take care of these past few months. More on this further down but this is just a short note to confirm I’m back for good, ready to tackle more language learning with and without AI.

It’s good to be back writing.

Anyway, let’s dive in!

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New year, new me? Yeah, right.

I kicked off the year as a lazy bum. Had we been in 2024 or 2023, I’d have been disappointed with myself but I’m not this time around. Why? Well, because a lot had already been moving since December, and missing one or two days is perfectly human.

First, though, let me tell you what’s been up.

I went to the Polyglot Conference in Malta at the beginning of November. While the talks weren’t all that great, the people I met were. Two in particular left quite the impact:

• An American guy living in Germany who spoke so well French I was shocked when he replied with a country instead of a city when I asked him where he was from.

• A German girl extremely fun to talk to who ended up making me completely lose track of time for hours when we chatted the last night at a bar.

What’s quite interesting to me is also how neither was into Asian languages. I had gone with the main goal of meeting people with whom I could practice my languages but I didn’t miss it at all because talking to them was so fun.

Still, I was able to speak have some conversations in Japanese and Korean, and listened in on a Chinese conversation once. I also met some people from a polyglot group living in Paris and have met up with them (and the others who weren’t at the conference) twice since then.

I was hoping the conference would energize me to learn more languages again but the rest of my life was so hectic I didn’t get that burst of motivation.

One of the reasons my life was hectic was because I was preparing to move to a flat in the suburbs of Paris with a friend. We moved in early December but with a lot of work and the holidays around the corner, we ended up truly settling in last week.

There’s still a lot to do for the flat to be what I’d call “perfect” but we’re getting our rhythm down more and more.

As we moved here, I decided to start taking care of my health. I got back into meditating (almost) daily and began running again. I’ve ran close to 30 km since then (4 times more than 5k). I’m also exercising on a more regular basis, although I want to ramp that up with time too.

As for languages, it’s taking a bit more time to start again but here’s what I’ve been doing:

• Chatting with ChatGPT Voice every 2-3 days for close to an hour in Korean and Japanese about topics I’m not well-versed in.

• Choosing sentences I’d like to write in my diary in Mandarin, finding out what they’d be like using ChatGPT, writing them down, and practicing pronouncing them

• Writing 1-2 sentences in Braille in my diary every other day

• Writing a short paragraph in Korean/Spanish/Japanese in my diary every few days

• Reading a Japanese novel from my favorite Japanese author (Higashino Keigo)

• Watching some K-dramas with Korean or English subtitles

As you can see, there are a few small activities but nothing very organized. As someone a bit obsessed with organization, it bugs me.

The lack of a clear direction is the main problem. So here are a few goals for the incoming year I’m setting for myself.

• Pass the HSK 4 (at least), the Chinese Proficiency exam

• Have at least 5 conversations fully in Chinese

• Read 7 Japanese novels

• Read 6 Korean novels

• Complete Assimil German & have at least one conversation fully in German

• Watch one season of a German show with German Subtitles only

• Travel once to Japan (and Korea if possible)

• Read at least 1 full page of a book in Braille with my eyes closed

They are purposefully not too hard so I don’t end up giving up other important non-language-related goals just to accomplish these.

In all honesty, all this could be done by the end of the first quarter if I went all in. But that’s not the goal. I know these will likely evolve with time but they’re giving some sort of direction.

For the month of January, I’ll focus on finishing my first novel of the year in Japanese and reading about half a Korean novel, while reviewing the beginning of the Assimil book.

I’ll also keep doing the other tasks I’ve already been working on because I enjoy them.

Oh! And I recently got back into using Anki for the first time in years. I’m still missing some days but I hope to truly make it a habit again. If you’re curious about how I use it, let me know and I might do a deep dive into it.

Back to the non-language-related, I’m also planning on taking a certification related to my job. I’ve been doing mostly the same tasks for the past two years and I’m starting to miss the feeling of getting better at what I do. That should take quite a bit of time.

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Anyway, this should be a good enough point to get back to publishing my writing online. It’s slightly raw so I apologize for this. I reread it and there’s a lot of wording I don’t like but I’m writing this only a few hours before this goes live and don’t want to push my first post back.

Don’t worry, The Language of AI piece next week will be more polished. I already have some notes 😉

Happy New Year and cheers for reading my ramblings!

To a great nerdy year ahead 🤓