Postby tarvos » Sun Oct 01, 2017 6:13 pm
I am a little sick, and therefore not much has been achieved (also because of work and other reasons, but mostly because today my brain is a bit slow.
If you've noticed, this year (actually in the past years in general) I've severely cut down on the amount of formal studying that I'm doing. Not that it was that huge before, but basically formal studying is limited to Spanish right now, and for Spanish it's limited to a slow, laborious preparation for a C2 exam. That choice hasn't been entirely conscious, but rather a logical result of this year's (and last year's) complicated situation. Not only do I have a normal full-time job, but I also have, next to rent and things to pay which limit my budget, had a miserable load of hospital things affecting my life the past years or so. The physical illness part of it has mostly died down again, but it requires constant vigilance and yearly colonoscopies and such are just no fun.
The mental part and stability is a lot stronger, and fortunately the choice to transition has actually made studying a lot easier as it has become much more possible to focus and concentrate. The downside is that with 2018's hormonal treatment, I am not exactly sure how 2018 will continue on the same path as 2017. I'm just hoping that a lot of the dysphoria will go away. However, 2017 so far has been excellent for my reading skills and I've added Czech to the list of languages I can reasonably claim to speak. What this means is that the majority of my time is now being spent reinforcing my existing languages, rather than haphazardly embarking on new ones. Not that that latter thing won't happen again or is out of question, but maintenance mode is quite necessary because unlike some people, I have about 15 languages to maintain at levels where I could be considered to be able to use them in conversation. (I'm not talking about things like Korean, Bulgarian and so on - they're all below that level, although there is a subset of languages where I could be said to have some basic notions even though I am by no means a capable speaker. We could include a bunch of languages in this group, about five.)
Right now I am reading Virginia Pérez de la Puente's "El Sueño de los Muertos", which started well but has gone into a lull of dry political wanderings without really advancing the story. I am about halfway, so the pace should pick up sometime soon.
And yes, that book is a whopping 630 pages as an e-book, and some Spanish books I've read this year have been equally massive. Someone who asks why I speak Spanish well should take a look at this year's book stats and they'll soon realize my page count for this year alone is over three thousand. (Not over nine thousand unfortunately). That kind of volume will do wonders.
2 x
I hope your world is kind.
Is a girl.