So it’s been many months since I’ve written an update on my progress and efforts. I can confirm that it wasn’t because I stopped moving forward and pushing to learn Polish. Quite the contrary, I’ve been working at the same rate and now prepared to double down on year 2 as a new phase of learning has begun. So where am I?
A box of words
I can admit that this box had been sitting on my book shelf for many years and hadn’t been tackled barely at all. Multiple weak attempts had been made but quitting was inevitable. Or at least I believed so.
Some open a box and find jewelry or chocolates. Others find stationary or mementos from time passed. For me, it was a whole lot of words. Polish words. When you’re running on fumes and got no time to pull out of your pockets you got to squeeze it out somehow right? So I did. Index cards to the rescue. The trick is to just get started and ignore the numbers just focus on each word, step by step, little by little. It reminded me of a proverb that I posted a lesson about but has a great message “The good, is the enemy of the best’.
The daily
That’s the key, to take that stack and grab a handful and just dedicate 10min, 20min, 30min and do your thing. As the stack decreases and you discover that you have memory capabilities after all….. the magic begins to happen. Some cards have a word and others have expressions, and then there are some idioms and pairs of expressions too. I got the hang of it after a week or two.
What fun!
I shit you not, it becomes totally fun! I was hammering these cards out at a staggering rate and couldn’t believe the progress I was making. It’s like a game where you test and test and keep testing. I have been going on a tour-de-force ever since mid-June and…wait for it. Yes! I’ve bought another box with the first finally vanquished! It’s time to move into the next phase and bring down the house. Confidence is high!
Sometimes the target may seem closer than it appears 🙂
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