Sunset from Hill House, Mount Helen. February 2024

Sunday, December 31, 2017

Ambitions

At the beginning of the January I established three ambitions for the 2017.

  • To walk 750 km using Runkeeper
  • To lose 10kg
  • To do something about my Japanese learning, although quite what I hadn't worked out.

So how did I do?  Not well I fear.

I walked a little over 500 km before I gave up.  I'm not sure what happened. Lindsey achieved her 750 by the beginning of December and I was more or less on track until August or September.  It is true that my phone stopped working properly and I couldn't use Runkeeper, but that was only for a few weeks until I got a new phone.  I just stopped walking around the time I had my hand done and didn't pick it up again properly. I have decided to set the challenge again for 2018.  Lindsey has also set the walking challenge but she has put it up to 800 km.

Not only did I not lose any weight, I actually put on 3 kg.  This wouldn't matter so much, I guess, except that my summer clothes all shrank during their winter hibernation.  It seems terribly wasteful to buy new clothes when I already have lots. I have reset that ambition for 2018 too

The Japanese, on the other hand, did quite well, although it never became SMART. But I have been using Lingodeer regularly (well, regularly up until the Christmas recess) since Lindsey discovered it and also Drops, which is a vocabulary app.  I have also been doing online Japanese lessons once or twice a week. My Japanese is never going to be particularly good but I can ask for the essentials when I am in Japan and understand a little bit when people talk to me, provided that they talk slowly! (I can ask them to say something again, more slowly please :-D )  So more Japanese in 2018 too, especially since I am hoping to visit Japan in October. I must pick up my use of Japanese Pod 101 again, given that I have a paid subscription, and also Wanikani, a kanji learning website which I regularly get to level 5 or 6 of before setting it aside in favour of something else.  Then, of course, i have to start again.  Perhaps I should set an ambition to get to level 10 by December :-D

The other thing that I really must do is to be more assiduous with my hand exercises.  I've almost stopped doing them and, not surprisingly, my hand isn't improving very much at all.  In fact, I'll go and do the morning set right now.

No comments:

Post a Comment