Question of the day.

What are you most proud of yourself for?

My answer:

Honestly I’m not proud of myself particularly often, it’s a bit of a weird feeling to me, but I’m trying to be more often, even if I’m just forcing myself to feel it because I think I normally should. If I do more or less genuinely, it’s usually because of my linguistic achievements. Like the one I’ve posted earlier today, in one of my song of the day posts, when I was able to understand a larger portion of spoken Norwegian for the first time. I’m proud of myself for learning English mostly on my own, of course I’ve had it at schools for years but I’ve only really learnt it when I started teaching myself, schools are rubbish at languages, and I’m proud of how quickly and how far I’ve gone with it, though I have a feeling like it’s not exactly something that I’ve achieved thanks to myself – my level of fluency, that is, and the pace of my English learning. – I mean of course as a Christian my way of thinking always is that we should be thankful to God for our talents and that without Him we wouldn’t be able to do anything, and of course I wouldn’t achieve quite as much if not all my pen pals and other online friends and such, because it’s the contact with the living language that matters, but I feel like I’ve got more than just an ear for languages. When I look back at my English journey, it feels like a miracle, because of how quickly and unefortlessly it happened that suddenly I was able to think in English with no problem, in some instances that comes to me even easier than in Polish, or without realising it instantly that I’m thinking in English, and suddenly I’ve got quite an English accent that a lot of Polish folks say is British. You’ll hear so many stories of people – whether linguistically gifted or not so much, but still trying to learn a language – putting so much hard work into their learning, or at least having some fancy methods that work for them or that don’t work. Neither was true in my case. It was similar with Swedish as well, though only to some point, I still don’t consider myself fluent in Swedish though my Swedish is good and definitely comunicative. I wonder why Welsh is such a slippery slope then. I’m not used to that hahaha but I mostly like it, I’ve got something to occupy my brain with. Oh gosh! I nearly forgot! I have a news for you people! Does anyone remember my “Reasons Why I’m Learning Welsh” post? One of my reasons was that I wanted to learn to say Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch properly and by heart, just for fun and for quirkiness’ sake (Llanfair Pg is a small town in north Wales). For a long time I was only able to read it fluently, which was still a huge thing for people who knew it, but not for me, because after all I knew Welsh phonetics and then it’s easy to read pretty much anything in Welsh. But, just today, I came across Llanfair PG somewhere and tried to say it just from my head without looking at it and… I just got it right. I did it once again and I got it right, and then I looked it up online to make sure I really got it right, and I did! now I can say it. There is such a Polish website called Nonsensopedia, aka encyclopaedia of humour, and they say something like even if you poop your pants here and now, you won’t say it. I’m not sure what has pooping to do with that but I assure you I didn’t poop while saying that. 😀 Isn’t that a reason to be proud of? I’m not a Welsh native and I said Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch about 5 times today and didn’t poop. Yay me! 😀 And stupid Nonsensopedia, maybe the person who wrote that article just had diarrhea, and thus really lacked sense of humour! I just wonder why it took me that long, but I guess if I really did work hard on it I could nail it much earlier. I like it though how spontaneously it came. So typical of my brain. 😀 Now I guess I need a new Welsh goal in place of that.

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day.

Which of your friends are you proudest of?

My answer:

I’m proud of many of my friends, for different reasons. But most?… Like most?… Hmmm. I guess my friend Jacek from Helsinki, the one with whom I was writing about the vikings and the Norse gods. I really admired his passion and determination. He didn’t have the best family situation, and lots of other mostly situational difficulties to overcome, but despite them, he decided he wants to study Finnish, and go to Finland, and he did just that. Despite he had dyslexia, and many people were apparently just openly telling him: “Languages?! You’re not serious, it’s not for you!”. He lived in a rural area but he moved to a city quite far away from where he lived, and started to study there. And then they sent him to Finland. And he just amazed me with his social skills, that he was able to get things from people very easily because he was always so friendly and charming. He managed to get a job in Finland while still studying. I’m sure that if he wouldn’t pass away, the world would hear about him. He had such a charisma around him and I just felt lucky to be his friend. So if I had to pick one specific person, it would be him, because, well he was overall quite a remarkable guy. Also it was really impressive and moving to me how brave he was when he finally became ill.

But other than that, I think it deserves mentioning, that I am also proud of my friends that I have in the mental health email groups that I’m in. Particularly those who are trauma and abuse survivors. Won’t be naming particular people here, as I’m not sure if they would be OK with it, but I feel proud for all of them. I myself also have been through some traumatising stuff, which I’m still having trouble acknowledging but, well, it’s hard to call it otherwise so I guess that’s how it should be called, but no abuse other than some emotional, and I don’t have PTSD. And I’m just so very proud of all of them, that although they’ve been through so much often very horrendous stuff, they still keep going, and are so incredibly resilient. And I’m happy to be their friend and proud of all their achievements.

Same about all the mental health bloggers whom i already know at least a bit, I feel lucky to know so many inspiring people.

Also when I write with some of my penfriends, who are travelling a lot, or doing other fascinating things, I just can’t help but think: “Gosh, what gorgeous people I happen to know!” 😀

Well so actually I guess I mentioned all of my groups of friends since most of people with whom I’m in touch fairly regularly, other than my family, are either from mental health lists, or from the blogosphere, or my penfriends.

I guess I could find a reason to be proud of everyone of my friends, at least those closer one with whom I talk more regularly and personally.

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day.

Name one way in which you were proud of yourself this week and one way in which you were disappointed in yourself?

My answer:

The thing I’m proud of is that I’d just finished another level of my Welsh course, yay! I’m doing two courses at the same time, I have only five challenges to do ofone of them so far, and of this one of which I’d just finished a level I have only one level left yet. Then I’ll be able to focus on some more advanced stuff. I’m really proud of myself today because of it.

And disappointed, well, luckily no big disappointments this week so far, but I’m a bit frustrated with myself still that I can’t seem to finish any Vreeswijk translation, I’m trying to finish something since his birthday, because as I mentioned in some earlier posts I tend to be able to write some of the translation and then get stuck with something and don’t know how to get out of it, how to finish, sometimes is just a very small detail that I don’t know how to handle in the translation, and I have lots and lots of poems and songs that I started to translate but don’t know how to finish. Or sometimes I just start to write and then realise it doesn’t really look the best, but I have no idea how I could improve it, so as a result I’m just deleting what I’ve done so far but not doing anything instead. And, unfortunately, since his birthday, I haven’t been able to complete any translation, despite I really wanted to and looked forward to it, that’s rather discouraging.

How about you? 🙂