At what point do you quit?

That is a question I can never remember asking myself, yet here it is as the first line of the very first blog I have ever written and I am now wondering why this has become the case.

What has led to me write this blog? What has led me to start this blog anyway? I had hopes of starting this nearly six month ago and the default blog page has existed since then, I’m assuming I had came to the conclusion that I have nothing interesting to say but then again I’m probably just over half way in life assuming that I die of old age so perhaps I do have a few things I could give a reasonable opinion on or perhaps just record my thoughts for posterity.

So what made me ponder this question? Well for the past twelve months or so I have been studying a new language and as I sat down tonight to record my daily video diary I found that I struggled to utter even a single sentence. Having been studying the language for around one year only recently have I been taking lessons (on the ever popular italki platform) and only this week have I been recording a daily video diary.

So did this failure tonight demotivate me? Yes and no. Well okay, perhaps just no. Sure I was disappointed at first (for a minute or two) but then I thought that for the last year I have been increasing my vocabulary and I know that it is growing on a weekly basis, did I forget words that I thought I knew – yes! And did I know those words when I looked them up – yes! Would I have known them if they came up on my flashcard app – more than likely they would have eventually came back to me.

What then is the answer for the poor effort tonight? Well I will put it down to the fact that recording a video of myself talking to my computer is pretty new to me, how was I supposed to know I should have really thought about what I was going to say, it’s hard enough coming up with something in my first language nevermind trying to come up with something in a language for which I have a limited vocabulary.

So at what point do you quit? Well, I’m still not asking myself that question just yet, I anticipate that I will probably put in another five years or so and maybe then reflect on how I am progressing, but in the meantime I will continue working out where I am going wrong and what I can do to put things right one step at a time.

Sometimes it’s hard to see how far you really have come when you are judging yourself on a daily basis and it can be better to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Sure if there are things I want to quit then I will but it won’t be because of minor setbacks – no matter how consistent.