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

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

Postby MamaPata » Fri Jul 28, 2017 8:27 pm

Brun Ugle wrote:I just wanted to mention that I'm probably going to disappear for a little while. Something happened earlier in the month that got me really stressed out and I've been trying to deal with it and do all the other things I'd normally do and more, and it isn't going well. So, I think I should take a short break and just deal with that one thing without trying to hold myself to all my other plans. So, I probably won't join the 6WC this time, even though it's so much fun. And I probably won't start Czech on Tuesday as planned. And I might even try to spend some time away from the forum. Don't worry though, temporarily getting rid of all my other obligations, real and imagined, will probably make it much easier to finish the one thing I actually have to do these next few weeks and then I will be back.


Look after yourself. Fingers crossed things get easier!
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Re: Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

Postby Systematiker » Sat Jul 29, 2017 2:32 am

Brun Ugle wrote:I just wanted to mention that I'm probably going to disappear for a little while. Something happened earlier in the month that got me really stressed out and I've been trying to deal with it and do all the other things I'd normally do and more, and it isn't going well. So, I think I should take a short break and just deal with that one thing without trying to hold myself to all my other plans. So, I probably won't join the 6WC this time, even though it's so much fun. And I probably won't start Czech on Tuesday as planned. And I might even try to spend some time away from the forum. Don't worry though, temporarily getting rid of all my other obligations, real and imagined, will probably make it much easier to finish the one thing I actually have to do these next few weeks and then I will be back.


I will remember you in prayer as you deal with stress and all you need to do. Wishing you well!
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Re: Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

Postby Elenia » Sat Jul 29, 2017 10:04 am

Take care of yourself. I look forward to your return :)
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Re: Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

Postby Brun Ugle » Fri Sep 01, 2017 1:06 pm

First of all, I want to thank everyone who wrote in my log or sent me a PM. It’s good to have friends. Thank you all for your kind words and understanding. Sorry I didn’t answer. At the time, I just needed to disappear for a while.

It’s 1 September, so I figured it’s probably time to get on the Hogwart’s Express and get back to studying. (Today, by the way, is apparently the day in which Albus Severus Potter boards the Hogwart’s Express for the first time.)

I did read the forum somewhat while I was taking my break and even got a tiny bit of studying in, but mostly I’ve just been house/apartment hunting and stressing out. It’s so hard to find a good place to buy, at least if I don’t want to spend more money than I’m ever likely to see in my whole life, and even then, I don’t think it would be easy to find what I want.

Anyway, I think I need to settle down a little and perhaps even consider putting off the house hunting and either stay here a little longer, or find a quieter place to rent. At least autumn is coming, so that there will soon be fewer motorcycles and other noisy contraptions on the road.

I’ve been having trouble settling down properly to study, but I did get a few things done. In Spanish, I finished the Spanish Glossika and read another Spanish novel. And now that the weather is getting cooler, and hopefully quieter, I should try to get back to my italki lessons. I have two left in a package and I think it expires in October, so I’d better get on it.

I also started German Glossika, which I feel is much better than the Spanish one. There are fewer mistakes so far and the German audio is pretty good. He even puts a bit of expression and emotion into the sentences.

I even learned some new Norwegian vocab. I’ve been reading every book I could find about buying a dwelling and so I’ve been learning lots of words related to construction, carpentry, masonry, etc. Some of them, I even remember. :lol:

I think I’m going to have to withdraw from rdearman’s study. I barely even got started, but I think it is too much for me. I never managed to install the necessary software and my computer is so incredibly slow, that I’ve decided I don’t want to mess with it anymore. I think the problem is more the age of my computer than a problem with the software, but I’m still just going to leave it alone. Even being in the control group is too complicated, to be honest. I’ve been avoiding studying Czech so that I don’t have to try to figure out how to register it in the spreadsheet.

Now for the hard part: I think I need to cut down on the number of languages I’m studying. I’m not Expug and I’m very bad at organization. I can manage one language, or even two, but when I try to divide my time too much, I get overwhelmed and don’t do anything. So, since Spanish and German are my two best languages after English and Norwegian, they will be my focus from now until I feel somewhat comfortable speaking them. The other languages will be dabbling languages. I think this will actually lead to me learning more quickly. When I’m just doing one or two languages, I spend a lot of time on them, but when I’m doing more languages, I spend most of my time trying to figure out what to do and worrying that I should actually be doing something else.
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Re: Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

Postby rdearman » Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:22 pm

Pity about withdrawing from the study, but needs must and all that. I have to say dropping everything except French has helped me a lot. It means I can focus on just one language and I'm not stressed out about trying to juggle various languages. However, I did recently watch a couple of TV shows in Italian, but this was just because I wanted to and watching for pleasure is actually pretty cool.

You need to get yourself prepared for the next Slovakian adventure! So, relax, chill, and then we'll just let Dave do all the talking in Bratislava (he does anyway) :lol:
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Re: Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

Postby Brun Ugle » Tue Sep 19, 2017 7:53 am

Forgetting about house-hunting and calming down turned out to be harder than I expected. The first week, I was still a complete wreck and didn't get any studying done. To make matters worse, I found a house in the perfect location and at the perfect price, but unfortunately, the condition of the house turned out to be too bad to make it worth while. But it was hard to have to say no to it because it was in a central, but very quite part of town and right on the river.

After I finally made up my mind that I couldn't afford a house with so many problems, I calmed down and managed to think of other things. I haven't been pushing myself to do anything in particular because I'm still having bouts of tiredness and trouble sleeping. (There's probably a connection there somewhere.) So, I've just been bingeing on whatever I feel like, and at the moment that happens to be LWT in Spanish. I'm still in the stage where there are so many common words I have to enter that it takes a long time to read anything. I don't use the "I know it all" button ever. I click on every word individually and check the definition even if I already know the word. That's because I may only know one or two definitions of the word and sometimes words have other definitions I never would have imagined. Thanks to this technique, I won't end up reading ghost stories to my chickpeas like a fool if my recipe tells me to "asustar" my peas. However, it does take a bit of time. It's just what I'm in the mood for right now though. I can't concentrate on Glossika, so I've set that aside for the moment. Also, I've been wearing earplugs a lot because I'm so tired that even the sounds of the lights bothers me, and that rules out any kind of listening anyway.

The other thing I've been doing is trying to spend the evening just reading in hope that it will let me calm down and sleep better. Sometimes the books are so much fun that it backfires though because I keeping wanting to read just one more chapter. I've just been reading random books from the library. I read a new Hercule Poirot novel in English. That was a lot of fun. I'm glad they decided to let someone write them and also that the author they allowed to continue the books is very good at it. It would have been terrible if she'd ruined them. I also read the Swedish novel Jeff and I discussed over in Radioclare's log. Also lots of fun. And now I'm reading a rather funny French novel, translated to Norwegian. Too bad I dropped out of the study. Maybe I would have been able to read it in French.

I'm also back to tutoring immigrants in Norwegian (and occasionally English, math and science) through the Red Cross, and that keeps throwing tempting languages into my path, but so far I'm staying strong. And tonight is the third night of free drawing lessons given by an Iranian artist, so there is another tempting language to resist. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've never met an Iranian I didn't like. They all seem like such happy, friendly, kind people.

And now, back to LWT. I'm completely addicted at the moment. I've been spending hours every day. It's really hard to stop at night. So, I should take advantage of my addiction to add as many terms as possible to the database. Hopefully, reading will soon go much faster. All those Spanish verb forms really slow things down when you have to add each one individually.
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Re: Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

Postby Brun Ugle » Tue Sep 19, 2017 7:58 am

rdearman wrote:Pity about withdrawing from the study, but needs must and all that. I have to say dropping everything except French has helped me a lot. It means I can focus on just one language and I'm not stressed out about trying to juggle various languages. However, I did recently watch a couple of TV shows in Italian, but this was just because I wanted to and watching for pleasure is actually pretty cool.

You need to get yourself prepared for the next Slovakian adventure! So, relax, chill, and then we'll just let Dave do all the talking in Bratislava (he does anyway) :lol:

That's weird. I didn't see this message until now, but the thread was marked as having been read. So strange.

Anyway, I'm sorry about dropping out of your study. I felt really bad about it. The original idea seemed like such fun, but it grew and grew and got rather overwhelming. Plus, I didn't anticipate all the house-hunting and being stressed out again. All my hair is falling out, so we might look like twins at the next Gathering. Or worse, I might be Miro's twin. :lol:
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Re: Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

Postby kunsttyv » Tue Sep 19, 2017 11:13 am

Brun Ugle wrote:Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've never met an Iranian I didn't like. They all seem like such happy, friendly, kind people.


I have the exact same experience, and I have no explanation why it is that I feel a real affection for all of the ones I've met. This isn't nearly as obvious with people from other countries.

In fact it's one of the reasons why Persian is at the top of my wanted languages list. The others being my love of Iranian literature and cinema (it's hard to even explain how the movies by film makers like Kiarostami and Panahi make me feel), and just how beautiful and majestic the spoken language sounds. As soon as my Spanish gets to where I want it to be, I'm picking up Persian again.

It's nice to see that others are enjoying reading in Spanish with LWT. Very cool! I absolutely love the software, and I'm almost finished with my first novel (Niebla). It's only about 250 pages, but I can already feel how much my reading comprehension (and speed, and precision, to borrow a blaurebell term) has improved. Speaking of blaurebell, do you know anything about where she's at? She suddenly disappeared from the forum. Hope everything's ok.

This is the first time I write in your log. Just wanted to say that I hope you continue to hold onto your enjoyment and obsession with LWT and Spanish books and that your language learning continues to be something enjoyable. For me, for the last one and a half year, Spanish has been something I've been clinging to from day to day, and I can feel that it has made me happier.

Also: nice to see someone else living in Trøndelag:)
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Re: Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

Postby Ani » Tue Sep 19, 2017 1:42 pm

kunsttyv wrote:
Brun Ugle wrote:Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've never met an Iranian I didn't like. They all seem like such happy, friendly, kind people.


I have the exact same experience, and I have no explanation why it is that I feel a real affection for all of the ones I've met. This isn't nearly as obvious with people from other countries.


Wow. I have said this in real life many times, that I've never met a Persian person I didn't like. So funny to see the experience validated.
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Re: Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

Postby Brun Ugle » Tue Sep 19, 2017 1:54 pm

kunsttyv wrote:
Brun Ugle wrote:Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've never met an Iranian I didn't like. They all seem like such happy, friendly, kind people.


I have the exact same experience, and I have no explanation why it is that I feel a real affection for all of the ones I've met. This isn't nearly as obvious with people from other countries.

In fact it's one of the reasons why Persian is at the top of my wanted languages list. The others being my love of Iranian literature and cinema (it's hard to even explain how the movies by film makers like Kiarostami and Panahi make me feel), and just how beautiful and majestic the spoken language sounds. As soon as my Spanish gets to where I want it to be, I'm picking up Persian again.

It's nice to see that others are enjoying reading in Spanish with LWT. Very cool! I absolutely love the software, and I'm almost finished with my first novel (Niebla). It's only about 250 pages, but I can already feel how much my reading comprehension (and speed, and precision, to borrow a blaurebell term) has improved. Speaking of blaurebell, do you know anything about where she's at? She suddenly disappeared from the forum. Hope everything's ok.

This is the first time I write in your log. Just wanted to say that I hope you continue to hold onto your enjoyment and obsession with LWT and Spanish books and that your language learning continues to be something enjoyable. For me, for the last one and a half year, Spanish has been something I've been clinging to from day to day, and I can feel that it has made me happier.

Also: nice to see someone else living in Trøndelag:)

I've not yet tried Iranian literature or cinema. I'll have to look into that. Or maybe I shouldn't tempt myself too much. The friendliness of the people already makes me want to learn Persian.

I don't know anything about Blaurebell. I don't know her outside of the forum, but a lot of people come and go. Life gets in the way sometimes. You could try sending her a PM. Even if she doesn't check the forum regularly, she'd probably get an email notification of it.

I do love Spanish and it's a bit frustrating to feel like I'm "almost there" for such a long time. I'm hoping this will be the year that I make it. Good luck to you too. Here's hoping LWT helps us over the hump.

Trøndelag is great. It's some years since I've been to Trondheim, but I lived there one summer for work and traveled there quite often for work for a few years.
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