summer swedish class success

i'm taking a short, intensive summer course in swedish, and it's actually going pretty well! 

i've had mixed success with swedish classes thus far. i had one very intro, very short course that i liked, then stopped going to an online one that i didn't like, then had mixed results from tutors on italki (they weren't bad, but i was looking for something great). 

this current course surprised me by being pretty much exactly what i need: a calm and supportive teacher, several but not too many motivated classmates, and most importantly, lots of speaking practice. 

i'd pretty much been bashing myself over the head a few months ago when it hit me just how vast the difference was between my speaking level and understanding level, cursing the hours i'd spent reading swedish books without putting in the same hours for speaking. i could function in increasingly difficult conversations in swedish, as long as i basically only answered in english. 

finally, finally, i can at least dare to utter any words at all. and since i've had so much exposure to the language, it's just been lying in wait for the day i can actually access it and use it myself (the vocabulary words that i recognize and understand when someone else says it vastly outpaces the words that are able to come out of my actual mouth). 

at first i was incredibly scared and felt like i'd made a mistake—this course is a b2 course, which felt a bit insane. but i had taken a placement test a few weeks before and got a b1 result, so it wasn't that insane...right?? 

it turned out okay. i'm not the best in the class (i usually take classes a bit below my level, which naturally results in being one of the top students) and that is also exactly what i need. i need to get over myself and whatever weird ego issues i'm having that are blocking my speaking progress (i'm typically overcome with shyness and embarrassment when i try to speak, which i did not experience when learning previous languages). 

my classmates and i also have a variety of different skills and weaknesses, so interfacing with each other is chaotic but also collaborative. one thing that's been especially helpful for me is seeing my classmates be brave and try things, even when they don't know exactly what they're saying before it comes out of their mouth. i have so much trouble even trying unless i already know what i'm saying is right, and that hinders my progress a lot. 

i do keep half-expecting that each next lesson will be the day that the discussion questions are totally out of my depth, but i seem to be doing okay so far. some days i have more courage than others. sometimes i let more talkative classmates have more airtime, until i remember that i actually do need to spend some time speaking myself, even if i don't think i'll sound as comfortable as them yet—in fact, they only got as comfortable as they are by speaking as much as they do!

great writing is all over the internet

i started this blog in part because i dared to strive toward greatness. if i wanted to ever be a great writer, i'd have to put reps in. i'd have to really work for it. 

what inspired this was reading my dad's old blog. it's nearly lost to the seas of time now. he only ever wrote a dozen posts, and he himself forgot about it entirely. but i went back and read it and was blown away by the quality of the writing itself. it moved me to tears! 

i think in previous times, i've assumed that all great writing is well-known. as in, the world is fundamentally a sort of meritocracy, where the writing that becomes well-known is the writing that is, by all definitions, the very best writing. 

the more i exposed myself to more "unpolished" writing via blogposts and tweets from internet friends, the more i realized that the world is teeming with great writing, and some of it is only read by a handful of people. 

maybe this seems demoralizing. what do you mean, the quality of the writing isn't the only thing that determines whether people read it? 

but for me, it's actually an amazing thing to realize! because it means i can achieve my goal of great writing, even if it's just on my silly little blog, even if i'm the only person that ever reads it. 

i kinda want to delete all my tiktoks

i used to post like a madman on tiktok. that's the secret to not caring about any tiktok in particular: just post 80 million and no one's gonna see any of them. 

but i never really post on there anymore. so now instead of being constantly replaced by videos that are potentially embarrassing and cringeworthy in entirely NEW ways, my old tiktoks are left to waste away in plain sight, to anyone new who visits my page. 

the part of me that doesn't want to delete all my tiktoks is the part that's a fiercely loyal archivist, who loves every silly little tiktok with the force of a thousand suns. deleting is for cowards who can't stand the blaze of the rays of cringe. 

there's also a part of me that deeply believes that anything i post immediately becomes almost none of my business. it's the same part of me that can't manage to care too much what i look like at any given moment; i'm the not the one who has to look at me! none of my business! it's out of my hands! 

same with the stuff i post. unless i really want to (and sometimes i do), i never have to look at any of it again. and yet it can breathe and live and exist out in the world, and might even help someone love the cringe in themselves a bit more. 

so for now, i will not delete all of my tiktoks. 

oh i forgot to mention,

who cares if my skin gets worse? who cares who cares who cares. 

truly the only thing that it would really impact in a negative way (other than me feeling bad about it) is modeling. and like, it's not like a legit modeling career was ever in the cards? i'm a hobbyist model, i do it for fun and i've had forehead wrinkles since i was like 15. 

who cares

my swedish is improving, but my speaking still lags behind

for a while i thought my problem with speaking is just that i didn't have the courage to speak. i mean, that definitely is part of my problem. it's just not the whole story. 

more specifically, i don't have the courage to speak unless i know what i'm saying is right. this holds me back from improving, but i've decided to stop beating myself up for it. 

i know myself. i know my strengths, and i know my weaknesses. and i know that even when a weakness wields its wild head, i forge a way forward and it all works out in the end. 

it's okay if i wait until i'm confident that what i'm saying is right. i'm okay with the consequences of my (in)actions! 

the stark asymmetry between my different languages skills (listening vs. speaking, for example), used to frustrate and torment me. but now that i've pushed through that even a little bit more, i can see how much i improve just by continually immersing myself, and that speaking will come in its own time, too. 

i haven't even taken a full course! i did one "intensive" beginner course that was a few hours each weekend for three weekends. and i missed one of the weekends! the rest has been learning on my own and simply exposing myself to the language. 

people keep telling me that i'll improve much quicker than those without swedish partners, because with a swedish partner, you can speak swedish at home! but the actual advantage to having a swedish partner feels more like the constant exposure to hearing them speak to other people, even if i'm not even involved! 

family group chats, of course, are also great exposure to natural speech—and a lower-stakes arena for producing swedish myself than in-person conversation. recently both my mother-in-law and sister-in-law expressed surprise at how natural my messages sounded, and thought my fiancé must be helping me write them. 

frankly, i'm just as shocked! i type the messages out myself, then have my fiancé check them. he has yet to correct any. it feels like magic that i've somehow just picked it up and can finagle my way into natural sentences, even if they are brief and infrequent. 

so i am confident that my speaking will follow a similar trajectory. eventually. and for now, i'm fine with having surprisingly-not-that-strange bilingual conversations, as i understand the swedish part and answer back in english.  

i don't want to wear sunscreen anymore

so aging just means my skin is going to get worse for the rest of my life? 

i ask because for a while there, i've been on an upwards trajectory in the skin department. my skin was pretty bad in college, then cleared up and has been improving since. and while that's the case, i've had decent motivation to keep up with my skincare and wear sunscreen. 

despite wearing sunscreen ~daily, i recently noticed a few sun spots pop up on my face. and my right eyelid is now half a millimeter droopier than my left eyelid. and i realized that maybe no amount of daily sunscreen will be enough to stop the aging process of my skin. 

so how am i supposed to want to wear sunscreen anymore? when even when i wear it, the sun still has her way with me? 

my skin tingles a bit as i write this. and my lips, they feel a bit tight. it's been a few days now of giving up on sunscreen, and today i happened to be outside (though it was overcast at first) when they sun came out and fixed itself upon me. 

so yeah, i guess i want to wear sunscreen so that i don't get sunburnt. but negative reinforcement never really works for me as well as positive reinforcement does. 

rambly wambly

i'm not sure what One Single Topic i'd like to write about tonight so instead i'll just write a little about each. let's see how it goes. 

today i had a video call with a twitter mutual. it's been ages since i've done that, and it was way more enjoyable and nourishing than i expected. part of me wants to announce on twitter HEY I'M OPEN FOR VIDEO CALLS!!!!! but the truth is that i'm open to video calls as they call to me and only with people i'd like to have a video call with. which feels bad for some reason. idk. 

anyway, about an hour and half before the call was scheduled to happen, my fiancé suggested we go to the gym—if we wanted to go today, it'd basically have to be RIGHT THIS MOMENT or not at all. so i changed into gym clothes faster than i usually do, and without first doing a "final check for twitter notifications" from the vibecamp twitter (oh yeah, btw, i'm running that now!). 

almost out the door, i realized, "THE VIDEO CALL!" 

would i have enough time? should i just skip it*? i ended up—bravely—deciding to go for both. i'd go to the gym AND i'd make it on time to the video call. as we walked over to the gym, i decided i'd just skip benchpress, shortening my routine enough that i'd make it home in time. 

the gym was crowded when we arrived—much more crowded than the off-times we're usually there. normally this would throw me for a loop, but today i was on a mission. 

what happened next was a level of Locking In i had yet to experience at the gym. it felt like a milestone. not only was i not fazed by the crowds, i also just went faster than i usually do and ignored little discomforts and ouchies i wouldn't have otherwise. i pinched my—uhhh, what's the name for the webbed bit of flesh between your thumb and your pointer finger? *googles* purlicue? oh ok...—purlicue adjusting the J-hooks (another term i didn't know, but this time i just asked my fiancé) and took three seconds to watch it turn bright red, then shrugged and moved on. 

after i finished my workout, i walked briskly home and even hopped in the shower before the video call. when i reported this to my fiancé later, he was appropriately shocked (in a proud way). usually i dilly and dally and dawdle my way to the shower, sometimes needing to be convinced to actually get in. 

another point of celebration today was i stopped and realized, while tidying thing after thing after thing in our apartment tonight, that i actually really enjoy tidying up. and tidying up is an entirely different activity than organizing or cleaning or deciding where things go. the latter (does it count as latter if there's more than two items? idk. the last one) is the hardest for me, and the one that takes the most convincing to get started. but now that we've done that already, for so many of our things, tidying is simply a breeze! a warm, gentle, spring breeze! 

the other day i was so proud of how our living room looked that a posted a photo of it on twitter. as i was admiring it, i reflected to my fiancé that i'm not used to photos of my living space actually looking as good as i thought would. i'm used to being proud of how it looks for once, taking a photo of it, then looking at the photo and being like, "wow that actually looks way messier and more cluttered than i thought." 

he looked at me. "you know why this one doesn't look messy? because it's not messy." 

ohhhhhhh.gif. 

ugh gosh, speaking of, the gif function on twitter has been downright awful recently. it's a whole thing, something about google sunsetting tenor, and giphy being a subpar replacement. i never got clear on the particulars, but the result is absolutely atrocious and an affront to me in particular. i love gifs dearly and use them unbelievably frequently. might have to start saving the gif files to a folder on my computer and using them that way....

*edit: i meant skip the gym, not the video call. for some reason that feels important to clarify (perhaps bc i'm trying to be more reliable/mean what i say/show up to things when i promise to)