I should definitely do a checkup, I take vitamins from time to time, and I know for sure that my vitamin D levels are suboptimal… Just hate going to the doc 
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Same here so I really feel you but it was a relief to find out about and take care of for me. Plus it’s good to know what’s going on with your health in general. Especially when your hobby needs some brain power and energy. 
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I feel the same. I also prefer at minimum 8 hours of sleep (and woe be to me if they’re not particularly restful), and my job is not particularly intellectually rewarding, so I end up having to seek that sense of fulfillment in the leftover hours of the day.
It’s a problem I’ve wrestled with for some years now, and while I still haven’t found The Solution, I’ve been trying some new stuff this year, specifically changing up my daily schedule (as much as I can) each month. Putting a priority/focus on something different each month, then seeing how well I stuck with it, whether I liked it or not, etc. sometimes it goes great, sometimes I get sidetracked halfway through and it feels like I never started. I’ll jot down my thoughts at the end of each month, what I liked, if I want to carry any habit over, and then try again, this time with something I couldn’t/didn’t focus on the last month.
So all’s that to say, maybe changing your daily would be refreshing and be able to give you perspective?
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How does that look for you? I mean, what sort of habits?
New things generally work well for me, though I’m not particularly analytical about them, maybe that would help.
Regarding shaking things up, I do suspect I have ADHD, though I think I could never get diagnosed since I never had issues with grades, which seems so be a major KO for the diagnosis if you weren’t struggling with school as a kid.
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So typically, there are a bunch of different things I want to do with my day but not nearly enough time to do them all: read (English), read (Japanese), read (Spanish), play videogames (English), play videogames (Japanese), study (Japanese), write (English), translate, exercise, etc. What I normally do is prioritize reading (due to book clubs) and spend my leftover time as evenly as I can, which works out 0% if the time; I just end up reading and nothing else.
So for example, in February I put priority on writing and translating and would only read after I’d done a satisfactory amount of either or on the weekends. This went well up until about the halfway point, in which I got mega-sidetracked with something I was reading in English. I was able to find obvious issues with how writing and translating were grabbing my attention, though; if they had been doing a better job I would’ve stuck with them for longer.
Then March came, and I decided I wanted to focus on videogames, specifically English ones. That month went better, and I was able to see how out of habit I’d fallen from books and languages taking up the majority of my time for some years now.
So just stuff like that. Not a radical shift in how I cut up my time each day, but an attempt to truly change my focus for a short period of time and seeing how that works.
(Sorry for any typos, I’m on mobile.)
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That’s really super interesting! Might be something I could try, if I get my willpower up just a little to organize my priorities 
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I have chronic fatigue (and chronic anemia, which just makes it even worse), so that means I’m basically never well rested. Over the past couple years, I’ve managed to somewhat get used to managing my energy levels, so I hope this can help.
The most important thing is to accept that sometimes you just have to stop, that you can’t continue an activity you started or do something you’d planned. It’s better to stop and rest now, rather than burn yourself out completely and then be incapable of doing anything for the next days (or even weeks sometimes in my case).
What you can also do is schedule breaks. That means breaks during work if possible, and really during any activity that would solicitate your mind or body. And if you’ve tired yourself out a lot, doing nothing is the way to go over listening to music or a podcast or worse reading, to really fully rest, if you can bear doing that.
Now for language learning and hobbies, I would recommend having different acitivities that you could do that demand different levels of energy. For reading, that could mean having a choice of books that you can read that are more or less difficult, and also a choice of books in your native language or a language where reading is extremely easy for you. It’s fine not to able to do everything you’d like to do in one day, you can keep the more energy consuming activities for days where you don’t feel as tired, and cycle between them as well, as @eefara said. It’s also a matter of doing what you want/need to do the most first, as long as that matches your energy levels. That way, hopefully, you won’t feel as disappointed to not be able to do everything you’d want to do every single day.
Also, for challenges where you have do to keep a streak, it’s completely okay to not manage to do that, and in fact, it’s almost certainly going to happen. So instead of going for a perfect streak, it’s best to tell yourself to do the best you can, and if that means breaking your streak, then that’s okay. Taking care of yourself and your body will always take a precedence over any personal challenge that you’ve set.
And about grocery shopping being so tiring, could you maybe get your groceries delivered instead? That’s been helping me save a lot of energy.
For cooking, you could try to make yourself a lot of food when you have the energy for it, that way when you don’t, you can still eat the leftovers and not have to cook. It’s also nice to have something like a couple cans that you’ll always be able to rely on just in case you need it. (For me that’s a can of corn plus a simple vinaigrette, not a super glorious meal but it’s better than not eating anything.)
And for other chores, ideally I would say to try to not push them back to the last moment, that way you don’t have to force yourself to do them when you’re too tired and you can choose a day where you feel slightly better.
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Fwiw if you do have ADHD, that could be a major contributor to the fatigue. I found medication was extremely helpful for that (though I’ve been off it for over a year now, and am generally doing ok, I think). It was really like an “oh my brain works properly, for the first time in my life” sorta thing. Used to feel a lot more fatigued from various daily tasks, amongst other things, before that.
In general I keep things pretty minimal, and working from home helps a lot. I also get groceries delivered, and tend to eat foods that I can cook in a microwave, or don’t need to cook. Also a rice cooker has been a live saver (both for rice or other things like カレー). Otoh, I’m of the “doesn’t need a lot of sleep” variety, and my apartment is usually a mess - bc I’d rather spend the time doing Japanese stuff (I live alone, so my thankfully my mess doesn’t affect anyone else).
Maybe you could try reading for just 5-10 min before you active study, rather than after? If you read stuff in your native language, you could always pick something that you’d want to read in Japanese eventually, so it will still be helpful in the long run.
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All of this.
I find fighting the brain fog/having to do things that I really don’t want to do would leave me wiped at the end of the day. Medication helps A LOT.
I also am starting to suspect ASD as well as letting myself let go of how things “should” be done and accepting that my nervous system can’t do a 40 hours week plus home upkeep plus hobbies and changing my expectations accordingly has helped a lot.
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Thanks everyone for the insight and giving me motivation 
That does ring to me, I always feel like I have to do “something” but in the end get nothing done and feel bad about it when I just should have done nothing in the first place.
Though it also gives me a reason to go out, when I’m working from home I sometimes barely get 200 steps in, at least that makes it feel more useful with a double purpose.
Literally had this before, just that I used one of these seasoning packages🫠. My other no prep meal is rice from the rice cooker with a can of tuna and mayo and anything else found in the fridge.
Currently it’s getting like that again here but I manage it better nowadays, my partner also helps me to stay organised though sometimes it puts a bit of pressure on me. I use a gamefied chores app and try to force myself to put my books away after reading (though currently there’s again a pile on my nightstand ).
I’ve been wanting to go to the doctor for that for ages but I’m terrified of the thought that they might just say it’s nothing. In a way I’ve been high functioning my entire life and apart from being messy and forgetful it doesn’t affect my outer life, it’s mostly just my inner life that feels like it’s unmanageable. That being said, maybe if I can’t get a diagnosis for ADHD I might at least get one for depression.
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Little progress update:
セマンティックエラー
It’s still hard but it’s so much fun. I really love Sangwoo and his quirky thinking. Most POVs are from his side so far and I love how his rational thinking translates into the language usage (e.g. using -te kudasai a lot).
葬送のフリーレン 1
Volume 1 was good, just a bit tedious since it follows exactly the anime. So nothing really new here
Textbooks and JLPT prep
I’m almost done with Genki2 (as a N4 revision), currently finished Chapter 22. So 1 final chapter to go! Then I will do 1 week of revision and start with Tobira. Meanwhile I’m working through the Shin Kanzen books (started with Vocab and Grammar). Trying to do this consistently and look up collocations/grammar points frequently.
I’ll probably try to do one mock exam per week to track my progress, but haven’t started so far.
Next I will probably continue the Card Captor Sakura Clear Card mangas (カードキャプターさくら クリアカード編 | L19), I need something light in between and those were super easy to understand and I love the series a lot.
It’s still been going a bit slow but also I’ve been sick a lot lately. Hopefully now that the weather is getting better, I can take my kindle outside to read at the lake!
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Finally finished Genki II, now I can feel free again!
(joke’s on me, I already started the next textbook)
It’s really a pain how much time textbook studying takes. But I like this type of focused grammar work and things like working on little dialogues and stuff. Maybe I have to alternate weeks where I textbook study and where I just freely do anything I want to. But to be honest I’m still feeling super burnt out from work, can’t get myself enjoying anything at the moment much.
I’ve been reading short comics on pixiv mostly and one-shots (not the manga ones, just 1-12p comics like).
But I’ve got a week off vacation coming up, so I hope that’ll recharge me a little bit!
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I still haven’t read much those past weeks, but I’m hopeful that it will get better, since both my Spanish class and Japanese Online Zoom class have summer break now and I will have a bit more time after work.
Currently my schedule felt a bit stuffed, I’m doing 2x a week dance lesson (standard ballroom and bachata), Spanish class (in person), Japanese class (online) and the weekends were also full with travel or visit from friends.
I did a bit of N3 study when we went to France last week (airport waiting times are great for this, however on the first flight we literally had to run to the gate despite arriving hours earlier - thank you airport administration…)
Being in France for the first time (Lyon to be specific, which is a lovely town which I greatly recommend for everyone looking for a more relaxed and friendly place than Paris), I realized how much I still remember from school. It’s not much, really, I just had French for like 2 semesters and we mostly sang Christmas carols – but I could remember a lot of phrases and verb conjugations and the like. Though it still was bad, mostly I could formulate a question in my head, but it was hard to understand the answer spoken to me in French. Sometimes it would have been easier to just use English to begin with, I hope they weren’t to annoyed about me mangling the French language (which I love, if only I had more time… and brain capacities).
Now back to Japanese, as mentioned, I haven’t read much which I want to remedy the next weeks, have been progressing a bit in my novel, but only like 5-10 pages at a time (of which there are few unfortunately).
I found a Japanese-German exchange in my city (yay for being a metropolis once), and went there for the first time this week. I was actually surprised how many Japanese natives were there (sometimes those exchanges end up being learners for the most part). But it was approximately 50/50 and quite a lot of people interested in tandems. My spoken conversational Japanese needs a lot of work (which is why I wanted to go there), but I could use a lot of Aizuchi and I was positively surprised that I understood a lot still and could more or less express myself (not well but get the point across). Will definitely go again. As a homebody, I was super nervous to go there (all alone), but it’s been a very positive experience for me. The people were super friendly and asked questions and were very patient to speak clearly and in simpler language. Often we used a mix of Japanese, German, (and just a bit of English, though actually most of them had better German in fact).
So a pretty eventful week for me after all, despite not doing as much as I would like.
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It’s great that you got to see France for the first time! Lyon does indeed give a better picture of France than Paris (especially with the expectations from TVseries and the like that a lot of people have of the capital).
I’ll admit, despite living in Lyon for almost a year, I haven’t done that many touristy things there, and I don’t really like the city either. My favorite place there however is the Musée des Confluences. Did you get to see some of the exhibits?
And if you ever go back to France again, I’d recommend visiting some other, slightly smaller cities as well. You could explore the South, Montpellier, Nîmes, Arles, Marseille, but then again I’m also very biased… Just make sure to prepare yourself for the heat (and mosquitos!) if you’re coming during the summer.
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Was also my favourite museum there 
we got the city card so we visited quite a lot of museums. I also liked the walk up to Fourviere, the rose garden there was lovely.
Actually we were there because my husband had a conference there, so we did a bit of travelling around the days before.
I would love to see some of the smaller cities! Though I would definitely prefer to work on my French, it’s always uncomfortable for me not knowing the local language, I don’t understand how my husband can be so relaxed only knowing English (for me it’s also a form of respect for the culture).
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I do not understand this either, I am very uncomfortable only knowing English 
I will say in a very mild defense of native English speakers, everyone is so incentivised to learn English that it often feels like there’s no good reason to learn another language*. And as a beginner, it’s hard to even find anyone who speaks your target language and doesn’t already speak English, which makes everything feel pretty futile.
*This does not apply to the UK. Like… the rest of Europe is right there.
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He says he already had to learn English and one extra language is enough lol
I think he could learn French or Dutch pretty fast though, he just doesn’t have the commitment. I guess to each his own (he has plenty of other hobbies so I do understand it since what we’re all lacking is time).
I’ve always loved language learning though, it kinda stopped a little when I graduated and continually had less time. In school I learned latin (up to 12th grade), english, 1 yr of french, 1yr of spanish, and finnish (more like a club, just learned a few vocab and enjoyed movies with eng subs). And dabbled unseriously in stuff like esperanto and elvish lol.
Had I been a student in the current age of language apps I probably would have speedrun a lot more.
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Same!
I’ve been stuck on Japanese for years because there was just not a good way to learn it until then internet, and now it’s so easy I feel like I’m shaking my fist at clouds talking about kids these days.
Unfortunately, not a lot of the tech has moved to other languages which makes it frustrating when learning other languages.
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Finally done with the N3 vocab set! I think I’m making good progress here. I probably could have barely passed the N3 exam if I had registered for summer already. By winter, I think I will be more than prepared and hope to pass with a high mark. I already did some mock tests and could pass Vocab-Grammar Reading with 60-80%. My only pitfall is Listening, the JLPT-style dialogues confuse the hell out of me because they frequently incorporate traps that you only notice if you really understand 1000%.
Other JLPT practice
Finished Shin Kanzen Vocab (the adverb chapter was an absolute pain, definitely need to practice that), working my way through grammar and reading now. Reading is pretty easygoing, I don’t worry much there. By December I will have read a lot more so I think that’s sufficient practice alone.
Also done with Tobira Chapter 2 (very interesting chapter about different speech styles, e.g. formal/informal, male/female speech etc.). I really like the topics covered in Tobira, the approach is very streamlined and compact.
Semantic Error
I finally got the first kiss! kicking my legs screaming
I notice there are chapters that are easy to read with minimal lookups and chapters where I struggle throughout every paragraph. It’s fun to read something where the two characters have differing speech styles. Sangwoo’s speech is very dry and teineigo, Jaeyeon very informal and expressive. Both love to be dramatic, I live for it.
Yotsubato
Finished reading until volume 13, now I have to find volume 14 and 15 somewhere… I loved the ばあちゃん chapters, she was such a refreshing character.
Given
ギヴン S1 | L25
I started watching this upon my friend’s recommendation, so far it looks like Haikyuu in Band AU lmao. Powering through the slightly cringy start.
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List format because I’m lazy today to type full sentences:
- Finished Tobira Ch. 3 (dreaded robots chapter is done, now comes the dreaded sports chapter sigh)
- Impulsively bought and read あした愛かもしれない | L20 because it looked cute and like my kpop bias ship … definitely recommend for lovers of wholesome and relaxed BL, it was amazing
and so green-flagged 
- Finally after long drought continued to read 鬼滅の刃 2 | L23 - I watched the newest anime season and was so touched by Giyuu’s and Sabito’s back story, my heart aches for them… The fact that Giyuu wears half of his haori in remembrance of his sister and Sabito
- Read 先輩はおとこのこ 1 | L19 and would definitely continue because it’s such an easy and relaxed read with a great LGBTQ storyline but why is the manga so expensive? Maybe I will just watch the anime for now.
- Playing a cute little visual novel on my tablet One night, hot springs, the language is pretty simple
- Watched a Jdrama called そばかす | L27 about an aroace character, greatly recommend
- Continued watching Given (subs), Shirokuma Cafe (no subs), trying to watch one or two episodes a day. I’m pretty happy that I can understand without subs but for Given, the amount of male casual speech is severely keeping me back
Also I’m trying to make use of Chatgpt in a way that makes sense considering that after all it’s still a dumb machine sewing sentences together. I find it’s pretty useful to give you English prompts when I feel uncreative about a grammar point.
I found that it’s pretty nice as a dialogue partner, if you tell it the role and to talk about certain topics. I’m aware it might not always generate correct sentences but it takes some creative pressure off me to generate two sides of a conversation.
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