Sustaining Momentum

I had a decent day yesterday. I was a bit busy at work so I didn’t do much writing, only updating my book blog. In the evening I started working on my big school assignment of the week, but after watching the target video I only tried to do the actual writing for about 45 minutes. So it was a modest investment of time, but I’m mostly satisfied with it. Finishing the assignment today to meet my goal will definitely be a stretch though. I think I’ll change it to noon tomorrow.

I danced yesterday, but I was discouraged at how badly I did, and end up spending nearly half the time just doing exercises. I need to review the instructional videos to figure out what I’m doing wrong, and I had intended to do so yesterday but I ended up watching another video about a guy speaking different kinds of Chinese in Chinese restaurants in New York and filming the other (Chinese) customers’ reactions. It was amusing, but the guy’s cocky attitude rubbed me the wrong way.

Anyway, as I was dancing and while cleaning afterward I thought about my goals. This week I’ve done really well and I’m proud of myself for that, but I’m concerned about sustaining this momentum. In my coursework I’ve been reading about self-efficacy—the belief in one’s ability to change one’s behaviors so that certain standards or goals can be reached. An important part of building self-efficacy is being reminded of one’s progress. I have tried to create systems for this purpose, but except for the first half of 2012 when I kept charts of time spent on language learning, I’ve never had significant success. I would like to program something eventually, but for the present, I want to direct my programming energy toward my memorization program. So, when I get the time, I’m planning to look for a way to do this. I’ve used Habitica before, but I didn’t find the effort that I invested in the RPG aspects to be proportionately satisfying (though that was during the alpha stages, so it might be worth another try). There’s also spreadsheets, which is what I used in 2012, but they require more effort than I like to render my results discernable.

In the past, my language goals have revolved around reading. Reading has many levels though, and being able to run your eyes over all the words on a page and formulating some idea of how they come together in meaning can be a long way from actually comprehending a text (as I discovered from this year’s Japanese test results). I’ve also found that reading does not have a significant effect on speaking fluency. So I was thinking that this year, since I’m gradually producing more English writing, maybe I can branch out my skills to be able to produce writing in another language as well. Production is its own proof of achievement.

Along with that, I’ve been thinking about language learning again. I don’t think I can or should stop learning a language completely. My plan was to wait until halfway through this year and then if I had time, I would return to studying a language, but it’s too strange to me. So the question is, which language should I study? Japanese is the most sensible answer for the present, as I am living here and I can practice (somewhat) easily if I try. I even have someone who would probably check my Japanese writing. Also, I still have not achieved my goals of being able to comfortably read visual novels and passing the JLPT 1. On the other hand, those goals no longer mean a whole lot to me. I’ve lost a lot of interest in anime and even visual novels, and from my current vantage point the number of jobs in Japan that will appeal to me in a year and a half is quite small. My next idea is Spanish. If I decide to teach in the US, Spanish would be my first or second choice of subjects. There are lots of resources available and if I am determined enough I could certainly find a way to practice it in the USA. If I don’t stay in the US though, I don’t see it being very useful. Finally there is Arabic. If I leave the US again, I will prioritize going to an Arabic-speaking country, and the sooner I get started the better. However, I’m not confident in my pronunciation or my capability to find someone to help me with it, and without that base I can see myself being easily discouraged.

Writing it out like this, I think I can eliminate Arabic from the possibilities, at least until I get back to the USA and find a tutor and/or some more motivation. I would really like to work on Spanish and take a test, because while I have a degree and living experience in French, a certificate and experience in Japanese, and experience in Russian, I have no proof of Spanish skills whatsoever. I feel like I could have a conversation in Spanish with a little study, and I know that I can read and understand Spanish texts. However, I will have to speak Japanese in the next two months, and I don’t want to get mixed up, so I think I will study Japanese while I am here. I will use my grammar textbook to create sentences and ask O-Sensei about them.

Cute conversation with kids

I haven’t slept well lately. Monday I set my alarm back to 6:25 to make sure I had time to read the Bible and do devotions. On Tuesday I set it to 6:20. Both times I woke up very disoriented, so I decided to stop moving my alarm earlier until I was a little more accustomed to the time. This morning my neighbor woke me up a little before six (maybe she had to catch the train, poor girl). I dozed a bit but still decided to start reading before the alarm. However, I was still really disoriented and barely able to keep my eyes open.

Monday I managed to complete my goal of all the textbook reading plus the quiz, and I even got a perfect score on the quiz. The material was quite interesting, but by the end of the day I was too tired to appreciate and really think about it. So I’m not sure that I will try that again. Yesterday I did the extra presentations, but that was only about twenty minutes together. After finishing that, I did a lot of programming. I made good progress and I think I’ve probably fully converted my formerly working program from a multi-windowed nightmare into using panels instead. Next I need to make sure that I can add verses manually, maybe test the reviewing a bit more, and add options.

I had a good chat with my brother last night. It seems that he might be picking up an interesting hobby (yard sale/thrift store reselling). I’m looking forward to hearing more about it when I get home.

On my way to work this morning I passed a few first graders. One of them ran to catch up with me and asked me if I had a beard. My hat/shapka is very furry, so I can understand their confusion. I unbuckled it and said “no!” and we all laughed. I walked a little further and they ran to catch up with me again, and we talked:

C: “Can you speak Japanese?”

Me: (in Japanese) “a little.”

C: “Speak!”

Me: “ohayo gozaimasu” (good morning)

C: “Ooh, even though you’re American, you speak Japanese!”

Me: “Can you speak English? Hello?”

C: “Hello!”

Me: (in Japanese) “Oooh! Even though you’re Japanese you speak English!”

C: “Oooh! You spoke Japanese again!”

So that was cute and funny.

Future of Japanese Study

I had a very productive weekend. I finished the week’s schoolwork a day ahead of time, on Saturday evening, and I danced and shopped, and did a little bit of programming too. On Sunday I did laundry, went to church and the gym, then cooked in the evening. I also did a little more programming and started the textbook reading for this week. My goal is to finish the textbook reading and do the quiz today, but the reading is quite long so it might be a stretch. At sixth period today I hope to watch the first graders do the 百人一首 tournament.

I realized yesterday that I might be able to give some of my belongings to people at church. From the list that I made, the only thing that I’m dead set on selling is my bike and saddle bags, though I think it only makes sense to sell the other accessories with the bike. My rice maker is in good condition and rice makers are in high demand so I feel confident that I can get at least twenty bucks from it. If it’s appraised at less than that, I wouldn’t feel too bad about giving it away also. The rest of my belongings: music stand, coffee maker, trash can, etc. I’ll probably try to ask the incoming teachers if they want to have, and if not, I’ll offer them to people at church.

My other thought of this weekend was about the JLPT. My score was 84, and the passing score is 100. I still did very poorly with the reading, and I think in order to improve I would need to read and answer comprehension questions. As of right now, I can’t envision a setup in which I would be motivated to do this consistently. Furthermore, returning to Japan, while still possible, seems less likely than ever. Therefore passing the test seems to have value primarily in abstraction. For the next year and a half I want to prioritize schoolwork, then supplementing my savings, staying healthy and fit, and finally working on programming projects before any other activities. With so many things already on my plate and my schedule liable to be mutable, I think it might be difficult to commit to something as time-intensive as studying for the JLPT. So I think I will give up on Japanese for the first six months or so of this year. If I can make it through half of the summer feeling like I have some extra time and willpower to devote to another pursuit, I think July won’t be too late to start studying.

The vanity of godless pursuits

This week ended up being a case-in-point for why I can’t play video games. On Sunday, instead of going to church, I watched some “Let’s Play” videos on youtube. This got me back into Dwarf Fortress. I didn’t play enough to disrupt my sleep, and I even made decent progress on my schoolwork (though I’ll admit that I’m about a day behind my plan from a week ago). But I did no exercise at all, even though I probably could have any day except Wednesday. My blog posting also suffered. Furthermore, I developed a bad attitude about work, and especially about the upcoming training seminar practice. I would probably be a bit sour about it anyway because it’s stressful and it forces me to speed-eat my dinner that day, but it’s kind of been haunting me because I feel like I won’t have enough time. And why won’t I have enough time? Because I want to spend it on video games.

There are many neat aspects of Dwarf Fortress, like the story-telling potential, but for me it really turns into a min-maxing colony builder. There isn’t much of an overarching goal for the game the way I play it, so when I reflected a bit on my week tonight I decided that I could drop it and direct my energies elsewhere.

I can’t remember where it came from (most likely from schoolwork), but for the last couple of weeks I’ve had the idea running through my head from Proverbs: “Get wisdom at all costs”. I picked up the Tim Keller devotional again briefly, and still found it underwhelming, but I was struck by his reference to a wise man building his house on rock vs. a fool on sand. He said that the greatest foolishness is basing your life on anything other than God. I’ve been obstinately trying to do that for most of my life, and in this last year I have felt the hollowness of this pursuit. In these past couple days also I’ve been feeling an echo of it. Though I’m set on the path of getting a Master’s in education, I’m constantly questioning my future career. In these thoughts resounds the vanity of godless pursuits.

Also, I think in one of the prayers Tim Keller talked about how Jesus lived with wisdom. It reminded me of how much I love the Idiot and other books or stories where the main character is Christ-like. Given that, why don’t I study the life of Christ more? I’ve only read through the New Testament past Matthew once in my adult life. And maybe it's worth reading a three-minute devotional to get that occasional nugget of gold.

It’s been almost a month since I started my resolutions. Honestly, I haven’t done very well. I’ve given up fanfiction, but my exercise and video game results have been mixed, and my spiritual focus has been non-existent. I excused myself for the latter by telling myself that I need to get advice from someone first, but I haven’t made any effort to get the advice. Thus, I haven’t made any effort on that resolution. Well, tomorrow I’m going to get started on it even without that advice. Incidentally, I also decided tonight that I only need to make night-before to-do lists on weekends.

Chickpea Bowls and Teacher Roles

I brought my rubik’s cubes to school yesterday and during the after lunch recess I went to the gym and played with them. The kids were amazed, even though I messed up the first time I tried to solve one, so it definitely took me more than two minutes. I solved it again and took less time the second time. It was a bit amusing to me that I got so nervous and messed up even with just a few sixth graders watching me.

Cooking dinner ended up taking longer than I expected (as usual). The recipe is only supposed to take thirty minutes, but I knew I would be slower so I figured on an hour. It ended up taking an hour and a half, so I decided to call off my exercise (again!). The miso chickpea bowl with tofu was really tasty though, and I’m looking forward to having it again tonight. I didn’t dry the chickpeas as much as I should have, so I probably burned the miso marinade by roasting the chickpeas long enough that they weren’t mushy anymore. I’ll have to try again sometime and make sure to do enough preparation.

After dinner I played a little bit of Dwarf Fortress, maybe for half an hour or so, but then I worked on my second textbook reading. I had hoped to take the quiz yesterday, but the reading turned out to be longer than I expected—even taking only a page of notes, it took me an hour and a half to read this second chapter of the textbook. I quite enjoyed the first chapter, and I liked the idea of the second chapter—metaphors for teaching—but in general I found that the author had little of value to say about the topic. It was mostly common sense, I thought. The metaphor of teacher as storyteller was kind of a romantic notion to me and quite interesting. Oh, he also talked about the teacher as a prophet. I took notes about that not because what he said was insightful, but because I was interested in how my high school folly might be more appropriate than I could have imagined.

Getting up this morning, I found that my legs were a bit sore. Eventually I remembered that we did the song “One little two little three little pumpkins” yesterday, and at every mention of pumpkins we squatted to make a pumpkin shape. I think in all we squatted only twenty four times, but apparently that was enough to make me sore. Maybe I need to add squats to my workout. After googling the benefits of squats, it sounds like it’s a really good exercise and could help me if I ever start playing tennis again.

Recipe Inspiration

At work yesterday I read almost all of the primary textbook reading for this week. It took about two hours. I also did some research for new recipes and discovered minimalistbaker.com, which has lots of delicious-looking vegetarian recipes. I found one for miso-sesame roasted chickpeas that I'm going to try for dinner tonight. This reminded me of a conversation with my conversation student who is a school nutritionist. She didn’t believe that adzuki beans could be used in anything other than sweet dishes. So I found a spicy Indian bean curry that uses adzuki beans.

After work I went to the supermarket and stocked up. I should have exercised, but since I had two days in a row of reduced sleep and also ate some a lot of candy after dinner which made my stomach feel a little overfull, I decided to pass. I read a bit from my second textbook reading, but somehow ended up skipping two chapters ahead without realizing it. When I checked my chapter progress and saw that I was in the wrong place altogether, I got a bit fed up and put down the textbook. I watched a couple of rubik’s cube videos but didn’t learn anything, and finally I read the Silmarillion until I got sleepy, just before 10. I think I got a good night’s sleep finally.

Productive despite distractions

Saturday I spent the majority of the day doing schoolwork. My effort paid off though, as I easily made perfect scores on both of the quizzes, which were on the longer side. In the afternoon I climbed, and did better than last week but still got tired around the hour mark, and just barely held out for another thirty minutes. In the evening, I was tired of working, so I played an idle game for three hours until I was too sleepy to stay awake. I woke up on Sunday and played a little more, but soon got bored of it.

I was resolved to go to church on Sunday, and was even ready to go except for changing my clothes, but as usual the idea of spending so long traveling and then meeting people and having to talk to them dissuaded me. I had watched a short video about how in Japanese it is rude to use the word for you, because it sounds like you can’t remember the other person’s name. At church, that is absolutely the case for me. I’ve been introduced to most of the people a couple of times and yet I only remember the names of the pastor, his children (not his wife) and a couple of other people. So not only is it uneasy because it’s in Japanese, and I don’t know the people well, but it’s difficult to talk to them because I can’t even remember their names. At my church in the US I also had this difficulty, but because the names are familiar and most of them were printed out sooner or later, I learned most of the people’s names eventually.

The time spent not going to church was only partially invested in school assignments. After that I wanted to get inspired, so I went to Youtube. Why do I think that Youtube is a good place for this? For a while I was inspired by tiny home videos, but I stopped watching those about a month ago because I had seen enough that the differences were insufficient to keep my interest. Videos motivate me to work on my climbing, but since I climbed on Saturday, there was no point in gathering motivation for that. They’re also good for dance, but I try to do my exercise later in the day to keep a consistent schedule for the weekdays. In conclusion, I need to reconsider my source of motivation, because rather than motivating or inspiring, Youtube distracted me.

First, I watched nearly thirty minutes of a Terraria speed run. Of course, this made me want to play Terraria, and I might have done so if I had it installed, but fortunately the combination of resistant will and the hassle of downloading and installing was enough to dissuade me. However, this video led me to a dwarf fortress video. I had started reading the Silmarillion on Friday, and Dwarf Fortress plucks some of the same notes in my heart, so I downloaded the new version and set it up. As usual, the setup alone took hours, and often I never get to the point of actually starting the fortress after doing all the planning. The last time I got past that stage so was probably five years ago. This time also I pushed through to the actual playing. For some reason I wasn’t held in the game’s thrall though, and after about an hour of actually playing I stopped and did my dancing for the day.

The dancing was not great, and I think I got tired overly quickly, after just half an hour, but I tried a couple of new moves and felt slightly better about a couple of old ones. At night I ate some kit-kats (snack-size) but I avoided ginger ale based on my hypothesis from the previous night that it disrupts my sleep. Nevertheless, I couldn’t go to sleep until about 1. This ended up being a good thing though, because my restlessness incited me to continue working on the assignment that is due today at 2 PM. Working on it last night meant that I managed to finish it before breakfast this morning.