So where are we at today? I don’t know really. For as long as I can remember I’ve had a bit of mental prejudice against Thursdays. A long way from the start of the week, but without the excitement of Friday for the weekend.
Perhaps I’m just stuck instead in the same old mental paths. Back when I was in grade 10 Thursday afternoons were back-to-back German (which I was terrible at, and with a teacher I hated) and advanced math (with a teacher I hated). Maybe that grind of a year was enough to have me stuck in rut ever since.
Maybe I’m the same way with languages. Maybe I’m not terrible at languages, it’s just that they came a bit harder to me than the sciences and therefore I’ve written off the entire endeavour for all time as difficult.
Similarly music class but we off doing any music for a long time, until a bunch of friends asked me to punch out a bass line for their band. Suddenly music didn’t seem so bad.
Perhaps that’s the difference. Surrounded by friends, only playing one note or two was still fun. But more than that. I was definitively better at the end of the first hour of practice than I was at the start. A small win and tangible results.
German never had that. I never felt I ever got any better at German.
Just like now. I don’t “feel” like my French is ever getting better. I mean objectively it must be because I can now watch a show on Netflix and get the gist of it. But all I remember is the last time someone in the street asked me for directions or when someone left me a voicemail.
But a friend pointed out to me yesterday that perhaps all of my bitching and moaning about French is really just another form of procrastination. A thing to distract me from the hard decision I don’t want to make.