Hey everyone, Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you had a good weekend *and a good Thanksgiving if you’re in Canada too). 🙂
This weekend, I sat down and revisited my goals. I realized that I haven’t really been thinking about that sort of thing in months. But I’m doing well with the goals I set here on the blog: I finished Memories and have already read over 25 books this year! That just leaves editing a few short stories that I’ve previously written. So I need to get on that over the next few months!
I also noticed that in my notebook with the weekly goals I try setting for myself, back in 2019 I set more long term goals. So I took some time to set some goals for myself over the next year and beyond. At this point, I’m mostly focused on my language learning as I’ve already put in so much time learning both Ukrainian (over four months) and French (about 3.5 months); I don’t want to stop working on either of them right now because I’m afraid I’d lose the progress I’ve made. So ideally I’d like to get one of them to a point of conversational fluency sooner rather than later to get it off my plate, so to speak (I’m hoping/thinking that it’ll take less time per week to maintain a language once you’ve learned it well enough to have in-depth conversations in it). Realistically, this is going to be French, thanks to both its similarity (particularly in terms of vocabulary) to English and the fact that I took French classes in elementary school many years ago. I’ve found that French vocabulary is currently a lot easier for me to learn and retain, and for that reason alone I’m pretty sure I’m going to be able to have conversations in French far sooner than in Ukrainian.
So with that in mind, I set the goal of conversational fluency in French for one year from now. I made some goals to build towards that through the year, including making it through some books, finishing the Duolingo French tree, and understanding French media without subtitles. For Ukrainian, I’ve set similar goals, but with a longer timeframe; my current hope is to be conversationally fluent in Ukrainian two years from now. But it’s okay if I don’t meet the goals I set in the exact timeframe I’m hoping for; I’m going to treat these goals as a sort of road map to help me get to that point (not as a set in stone deadline for being able to have deep conversations with people).
In terms of writing goals, at this point I haven’t set any new ones for now (although as a super long-term goal, I’d love to create French and Ukrainian versions of Memories….) Hopefully I’ll be able to meet the last goal I set for 2020 here on this blog (editing two stories), and then I can plan for some new writing projects for 2021!
Oh, I am still planning on brainstorming a new story idea I had as well, but I didn’t want to put any pressure on myself by making that into a set goal for the remainder of the year. We’ll see how it goes. 🙂
So what about your goals for 2020? How have they been going? 🙂
An Acquaintance with Letters 
You’re making awesome progress toward huge goals! I admire anyone who can master a new language. In high school, I took French all 4 years and remember VERY little. My maternal grandfather was born in the Ukraine but then moved to Germany. So, as a child, I heard him speak German, in addition to English. I’m curious as to how you chose Ukrainian!
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I’m sure things would come back to you after studying it for four years – I’ve been super surprised by the amount of vocabulary I retained from school! 🙂
Oh neat! Do you know any German from him? I’ve been surprised at the random Ukrainian words I knew without really realizing it until I started learning!
My whole family has huge ties to Ukraine! All four of my mom’s grandparents were from Ukraine (or Ukrainian speaking regions of other countries because the borders shifter a fair bit back then), and on my dad’s side, my great-grandparents, my grandfather, and two of my uncles! When my dad was little, he didn’t speak much English until he went to school, and still speaks Ukrainian today. So I chose Ukrainian thinking I’d have someone to talk to. 🙂
Lol, then French happened; a friend of mine wanted to learn and I said sure, I’ll learn it too. As I’ve been telling people about it, I’ve found others who are interested in learning French as well. 🙂
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We learned a few phrases or prayers in German while growing up, but that’s it. So interesting about your Ukrainian background, and I can certainly see why you’d want to learn the language! Good luck!
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Thank you! 🙂
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