May Check-in and June Goals
Lately I’ve had an increase in these types of expressions in my mining deck! They’ve been a lot of fun to learn, but definitely harder to remember immediately. Breaking them down into parts in my head and thinking about how they can be applied abstractly sometimes really helps out. And of course, lots of repetition!
Another month come and gone! I talked a lot about what I was doing last month already, so this post will also focus on what I plan to do in June.
I set myself a goal of 1,800,000 characters to read during May, and I can happily say that I surpassed it, barely, at 1,831,517 characters!
May definitely started out stronger than it finished just because of the half-round of Tadoku. More than half of my total characters for the month came from those two weeks.
Here are the 11 books I read in May. I’ve talked about some of these already so I won’t bore you to tears with rehashing anything. I think I had a nice mix of book content to say the very least! Even some that you may think would be similar, like Guin Saga, Overlord, and Slayers, all had very different vibes and writing styles to them. One thing I’ll say that I don’t think I have yet is that 雨の日も、晴れ男 felt like a longer version of a short story from the ５分後に意外な結末 book. Very similar vibe in my opinion, but very charming!
As previously mentioned, I also read some of the VN 神学校 last month. I haven’t made much more progress just yet, as I’ve been craving some other vibes at the moment, but it’s absolutely a VN I plan on sticking through until the end. I think the route I did finish was one of my reading highlights for all of last month!
To prepare for the upcoming Final Fantasy XIV expansion, I started playing again on my main account. I still have a ton of side quests I’ve never touched, so to get used to the writing style and vocabulary again I dove right in. I’m always amazed at just how much text is in that game. I can’t wait to see how much reading I end up doing when Dawntrail releases!
I had a really weak goal of 600 listening minutes for the month just to make sure I didn’t completely neglect it. I came in a bit ahead at 622 minutes. This was a combination of YouTube videos, one drama CD, some podcasts, and a few anime episodes. I was also watching tons of Japanese YouTube shorts towards the end of the month, but I didn’t track those.
I talked about this a bit, but my focus was kind of all over the place in the second half of May. I was struggling with allowing it to be that way and giving in to all the brainrot, and trying to pull myself back in with more focused activity times. One thing I noticed was that I was going for my phone to watch shorts more than I was reaching for my Kindle, so my Guin Saga progress practically stalled. I don’t think I’m feeling any resistance to Guin Saga, but perhaps I need to consider adding another series like Re:Zero to my Kindle to give myself variety. As it stands, my Kindle is pretty much just the Guin Saga machine. I may also have just been a bit too addicted to the short-form video content. I think I’m mostly free from that now. Sometimes I just need to get things out of my system I guess!
So as of the end of May (and technically June 5…huhu), here’s where my spreadsheet is sitting at. I’m also sitting at 205 out of 225 total books for my official 2024 book reading goal, but I’m only at 205 out of ??? for my secret goal. I have read 64 books so far this year, with an average of 2.7 books read per week.
I may rethink my “Mined Cards” goal and decide if the “10,000 mined cards” I always dreamt of is still something I actually want, or if I’m just clinging to the past. Ever since reading Atomic Habits, I’ve been a bit more aware of how powerful “identity” can be, even for somewhat small things. Clinging to the identity of “person who always wanted 10k cards mined in Anki” may end up holding me back or making me feel weird about SRS if I don’t re-evaluate my goals.
My listening goal is slow going! These are specifically unscripted listening hours to help improve my listening comprehension in that area. I’m pretty good with anime and drama CDs, as well as scripted YouTube videos. I just like having this goal to make me a bit more mindful of other types of listening!
I have definitely got a bit more energy for June so far! I know we’re only less than a week in, but I was quite excited about my goals. With some life changes happening in less than a year too, I think I’m just extra motivated to try to get my official and secret 2024 goals accomplished.
My June goals are:
Finish Flesh and Blood 2 and Guin Saga 13 (my in-progress digital books)
Finished volumes 3-15 of Slayers (Novel Sonic my way to glory!)
Do all new cards in my mining deck backlog in Anki (would you believe I’ve already finished this one? There were 700 new cards in it about a week ago.)
Review ahead in Anki enough to make July’s review counts fairly low (to prepare for FFXIV gamer time)
10,000 steps daily (A lot of this is done while reading indoors because Texas is fucking hot)
Accomplishing all of these will mean I finish 15 books this month! I’ve done volumes 3 and 4 of Slayers already (in one day!!), so I just need to finish the rest. I notably did not set a character count goal this time, so I’m curious to see how these 15 books stack up against the 11 (and other reading) I did last month. Slayers volumes are way shorter than Overlord or Loop7 volumes so that definitely helps with the ability to binge them.
This month’s goals are a bit unique in that I don’t normally combine a fair amount of reading with a ton of SRS time. But like I said earlier, life changes happening SoonTM (time will fly, I just know it) means I’m a bit more motivated than usual. I’m going to be dedicating almost all of July to playing FFXIV so I’d like to still make sure I’m getting close to my book count goal by going a bit harder in June than I normally would. Since I’m using audiobooks for Slayers to help with my focus, I don’t think it’ll be too bad though. The narrator’s speed is actually quite close to my normal reading speed so it hasn’t felt as slow as other audiobooks. I’m really trying to focus on listening better so I can imitate better, so speeding up is not in the cards for me right now.
As for my mining deck backlog now being depleted, I feel so much better about it. I go through stages where I want the backlog vs not, and I’m definitely in a “not” period. Normally I want the backlog because there are times I don’t feel like mining and making cards, but I do want to see new cards. Other times, it’s a time issue. I’m trying to create a stockpile for the future. This time, I’m thinking that I kind of want to keep doing the n+1 approach with both the Flesh and Blood drama CD deck and the Final Fantasy XIV deck I create with my texthook via playing. I use morphman to show me cards that only have one new piece of information on it, and then I fill in the blanks. I’ll be suspending anything I don’t think I’ve seen yet to keep it easier, and then periodically unsuspending. It’s just a different approach to new cards that I want to try for a bit. I still have to make the cards, in that I’m filling in the blanks. The sentence will already be there. This also gave me a chance to finally try out a note type I made awhile back! It’s fun to try to do the same things in different ways sometimes, so that’s all I’m doing.
A combination of life changes and wanting to hit my goals means I’ll be reassessing how often I post in my blog too. I think it was so cool that I went from posting once a month on Wordpress to posting weekly on Substack! I liked having a weekly writing streak to show my consistency, but I also don’t think I have as many thoughts as I used to while starting out. I do love writing about my immersion, but I can easily pick my favorites to write about in monthly round-up posts going forward. Blogging and journaling is something I’ve done for a long time and I certainly don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. I just want to give myself a bit more time to think of things to talk about! A week used to feel like forever when I was younger, but it’s gone in a few blinks of the eye these days.
So that being said, I will see you all again in about two weeks!