Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

[Brun Ugle]

This week I’ve been trying to get my sleep schedule back on track without much success. I envy those who can go to bed and get up 7-8 hours later fully rested. I need 7-8 hours of sleep, but it often takes me 10 hours to get that sleep. My brain can’t seem to decide if I should be an early bird or a night owl and randomly changes. So sometimes, I need to go to bed at 8 or 9 at night and wake up at 5 or 6, and other times I can’t sleep until well after midnight and can’t wake up until 9 or 10 or so in the morning. And then there are times like now, when I’m tired, sometimes to the point of nearly fainting in the afternoons, but at night I sleep for a few hours during the first part of the night, am wide awake in the early morning hours from midnight or 1 until 3 or 4 and then fall asleep again. So, at the moment, I’m rather tired and cranky because I’m not getting enough sleep and I end up wasting a lot of time trying to get some sleep or being too tired to be productive when I’m awake.

The France Culture website has a (french language) presentation by a sleep boffin. He's very big on light being the principal factor controlling your body clock.

After the presentation there is a little Q&A. Around 1h50m -ish he mentioned resetting your body clock by exposing yourself to sunlight early in the morning, and avoiding bright light before going to bed. Computer screens and TVs are apparently very bad news before sleep.

Thanks! I'm aware of the problems with light. I have a special lamp that I use in the mornings. Lately I haven't been so careful about evening exposure to light, but the truth is, it doesn't seem to make much difference for me. My problem with sleep seems to be related to stress. If I'm stressed or I know there is something I have to do the next day, even if it is fairly trivial, I won't sleep. I don't consciously worry about it, but I have trouble sleeping anyway. It is something that goes with being autistic and bipolar. Both conditions come with sleep disorders. At the moment though, I'm sleeping well because I don't have much stress.

[Brun Ugle]

I seem to have found my groove with the 6WC. I’m now in second place overall and for the past week or so have been doing over 6 hours a day, which was my goal. I’ve logged over 40 hours of FSI spread over three languages, so I’m pretty pleased with that. Also, a fairly large portion of my studying has been “real” study rather than a telenovela binge. So, yay me!

Whatever was wrong with my lungs seems to be getting a bit better, but so slowly. My lungs no longer feel heavy though, so I’ve started getting a little bit of exercise. I still have this wheezy thing going on in my upper chest though, so I’m taking it easy. So boring!

Spanish
I’ve been trying to get through FSI as quickly as possible, doing about 2 lessons per week. It was almost a bit too easy for a while there, but now it’s getting into slightly more difficult territory, so I might end up slowing down again soon. I was planning to just get through it and then make my main study materials GLOSS and GdUgE, while also doing things like watching TV, reading, listening to podcasts, using Memrise, doing the Output Challenge and continuing Italki lessons. Spanish is just so much fun right now. I can enjoy using it without too much effort, at least when it comes to receptive skills, but it’s also fun to study.

I finished the book I was reading, El amor huele a café by Nieves García Bautista. It took me a long time because I was reading very intensively, looking up everything even though I didn’t have to. It turned out to be a pretty OK book, especially considering it was free. I’d assumed from the title that it would be a romance novel, but it was more like the film Love Actually. It followed multiple intertwined storylines showing different forms of love. And like Love Actually, it was a little confusing at first because of there being so many storylines. I ended up writing a list of names so I could remember who was who. It quickly got easier though and I had no real difficulties reading it once I got past the first few pages. It’s not a very long book and is a fairly easy and enjoyable read. It would make a great beach novel if it weren’t for the fact that one probably wouldn’t want to take one’s Kindle to the beach.

Esperanto
I’ve mostly listened to podcasts this week. My mobile phone is kind of old and doesn’t have a great memory, so I wanted to erase a few things and I had a bunch of podcasts to get through. Of course, I listened to one episode, and when I went to erase it, my phone automatically downloaded a bunch more, so now I have even more to get though. They are interesting though, just a bit on the long side. Eventually, I’ll get a new phone, but I’m putting it off as long as possible.

German
I feel like German is getting a bit neglected, but really it’s not so bad when I look at my Excel table. I usually do more than an hour a day. It’s probably just that I had been doing so much more before Finnish came along. Of course, I should also remember that my main Finnish course is in German, so that gives me a little more German exposure too.

I reviewed one more FSI lesson. I still feel like I need to find a better source of grammar drills though. The German FSI seems to try to pack too much into each drill. I need a whole bunch of drills just drilling cases and genders in simple sentences for example, but they always have sentences that are too complex, so I have to concentrate on getting all the adverbs and clauses in the right places at the same time as I’m trying to remember the genders and cases of the nouns. I’m getting a bit better though. Duolingo is helping. I’ve been doing a lot of that.

Japanese
I’m still just toddling along. I did chapter ten of my book and remembered why I hated that chapter. They throw a whole long list of transitive and intransitive verbs at you and then after two exercises you’re supposed to remember which is which. I don’t really have much trouble with keeping track of them in other languages, so I think my transitive/intransitive problem with Japanese is just that I got them all at once like that.

Finnish
Finnish is getting really bizarre as I near the end of the passive wave of Assimil. Now they’re DECLINING their verbs. Last night’s lesson was a little intimidating. Except for a few short words like “se,” all the words seemed to be at least ten letters long and so full of double letters that it looked like the author had spilled something on their keyboard so all the keys were sticking. It took me a long time to wrap my brain around it, but once I did, it was so cool! I love having five infinitives and verbs that decline like nouns. Still, it was a bit of a relief to turn to back to the active lesson where verbs are verbs and nouns are noun.

In addition to the five Assimil lessons, I went through chapter 2 of FSI a couple of times. I’ll do one more time through the workbook and then move on to chapter 3. I’m also thinking of what to do after I finish the passive wave of Assimil, which should happen this week. I’ll then have time to squeeze in something else. Maybe Supisuomea.

Norwegian
I finally finished reading the verb section of my grammar book. It was kind of interesting. There are all these things I know about Norwegian, but have never actually seen written down before. My frustration with the language when I came here led me to mostly drop studying it and I ended up learning it mostly by exposure. So I have a good feel for the rules, but there are a lot of them that I don’t know explicitly.

[Cavesa]

... for the past week or so have been doing over 6 hours a day, which was my goal. I’ve logged over 40 hours of FSI spread over three languages, so I’m pretty pleased with that. Also, a fairly large portion of my studying has been “real” study rather than a telenovela binge. So, yay me!

Yay you! You're absolutely awesome!!!!!

And inspiring, I am opening my GdUdE right now. I don't know, I may have been a bit burnt out after too much studying in too short time. I am starting with "at least a bit is still better than nothing", so I don't know when will I catch up with you. Or if

[Brun Ugle]

... for the past week or so have been doing over 6 hours a day, which was my goal. I’ve logged over 40 hours of FSI spread over three languages, so I’m pretty pleased with that. Also, a fairly large portion of my studying has been “real” study rather than a telenovela binge. So, yay me!

Yay you! You're absolutely awesome!!!!!

And inspiring, I am opening my GdUdE right now. I don't know, I may have been a bit burnt out after too much studying in too short time. I am starting with "at least a bit is still better than nothing", so I don't know when will I catch up with you. Or if

I'm not planning to start level C just yet, so you still have time. And I probably won't go through it very fast anyway. I'd like to have FSI completely out of the way before starting, but I might start it when I finish part 3 of FSI. I'll decide when I get that far.

It's easy to get burned out if you try to make yourself do something, but if you let yourself switch between materials and work on whatever is fun at the moment, and take breaks where you just enjoy TV or books without pressure, that helps. When the 6WC is over, I think I'll take a couple days off from studying and just watch TV and read extensively.

[Brun Ugle]

Memrise is down, and just when I was in the mood for a Memrise binge. Oh well, at least I got a little bit done before the trouble started. Duolingo was acting up a little too, but not as bad as Memrise.

[Brun Ugle]

Guess who finally finished the passive wave of Finnisch mit extra Mühe?

[Brun Ugle]

It’s been a pretty good week. I experienced a bit of a dip in my study hours in the middle of the week, due to Lent starting. I went through some serious prune doughnut withdraw, but I’m feeling better now. Also, they will supposedly be finished soon with the renovations in the neighboring apartment and then maybe my lungs will get better. They were doing a lot of sawing in the middle of the week and my lungs felt like they were full of cacti. So, maybe it wasn’t so much doughnut withdraw I was suffering from, but a sawdust overdose.

Spanish
I think I got through about two and a half lessons this week, but I can’t remember what lesson I was up to. I’m now starting lesson 44, which is the second from the last in part 3 of the FSI course. My Spanish is getting to the point where most of this stuff is pretty easy and I can just zip through it. That’s my current plan, to zip through and then move on to a combination of GLOSS and GdUdE, and continue with Memrise, and of course, devour native materials.

Esperanto
The only Esperanto I’ve been doing lately is listening to podcasts with an occasional peek at Harry Potter. The podcasts are good, but I get a little tired of them sometimes. They’re all so educational. I need to listen to something light and amusing once in a while.

German
One more unit of FSI reviewed, but I still haven’t caught up to where I was before. It is sinking in a little better though. I also listened to a bit of a podcast, watched some more of Rex and read a little Donald Duck, but mostly I’ve been doing Duolingo. It’s starting to get its revenge though. Now I have to do a pile of strengthening lessons each time I log in.

Japanese
I reviewed one more chapter of my old textbook and I also finished the Michel Thomas foundation course. I thought it was pretty good. I didn’t really learn anything new, but it was a good reminder of the things I used to know.

Finnish
The big news here is that I finished the passive wave of Assimil. Of course, a good bit of the last quarter of the book went right over my head, but I’m hoping the active wave clears it up a bit. I also finished up chapter two and moved on to chapter three of FSI. I’ll have to go through it a couple more times before moving on though. I’m also back with Memrise. I’m really starting to like it, but I can’t do too much or I get a headache.

Norwegian
I read the chapter about articles, which was really short, so I should have read another chapter, but I didn’t. I’m lazy.

[Elenia]

Well done on finishing the passive wave of painful Finnish! You've given me the motivation to do something more than Clozemaster and ANKI

[Systematiker]

Makes me feel like I need to do something with Finnish as well...

[Brun Ugle]

I've been on an FSI Spanish binge lately and have just finished part 3 of the Basic course. The last few lessons were surprisingly easy. Of course, I expect most of it to be review since I've already done the Programmatic course and the first two GdUdE books, but these last few lessons were even easier than I expected considering how late they come in the course. At this rate, I could potentially finish the course by the end of the month. (Maybe I should have a race with Systematiker.) I'm assuming though, that the last part of the course will get a little trickier and maybe bring up some of the more subtle points regarding use of the subjunctive forms.