Changes – Mikuwashi studies

FEBRUARY AND MARCH PROGRESS REPORT ON JLPT N2

Posted on April 18, 2022April 18, 2022 by Mikuwashi

Before I jump into how February and March went study-wise, I should explain why I decided to combine those two months in a single progress report.

Well, work got in my way. Or, to be specific: fatigue from work got in my way.

From December onward, it’s the highest season in my industry. I’m on call 24/7, so technically I’m at work from December till March (if you’re about to call DOL, put the phone away – I’m an entrepreneur). As a result, mid-Feb, due to all the trouble and stress that had occurred at work, I was very tired. I didn’t feel like studying. All I needed was sleep, sleep and some days off (which I finally got when March started).

With the beginning of March and the high season over, I took much-needed rest. I mostly slept, gamed and focused on recovering. What has been happening just over our eastern border didn’t help either, with my family’s minds exploring the ideas of ‘what-ifs’ the invasion progresses to the west and to our country. As you can probably imagine, this added extra stress and left no room for even an inch of thought left for Japanese.

Fortunately, the situation improved around mid-March. I felt rested and ready to embrace Japanese again. And so I did. However, because I spent only half of both February and March actually studying, I thought it would make more sense to merge those two months rather than writing two separate posts for both, especially because they had a common reason for the break in my studies.

Now, without further ado, let’s see how much of a leap I took towards my passing JLPT N2.

N2 PROGRESS

February was up to a great start and I moved forward per the plan. However, due to more and more problems at work arising, as the days passed, I studied less and less N2 materials and my study plan crumbled. If you glance at my study log, I only used JLPT prep materials 5 times in the entire month, making the greatest progress in my grammar studies (2 whole chapters!). Vocabulary and kanji were studied ONCE. However, after going through vocabulary, I didn’t really review or put words into flashcards.

That changed with March – I decided to make amends with my abandoned Anki and started inputting new cards. To be honest, I’m still waaaaaay behind in creating new ones, but I’m trying hard to catch up with the chapters I’m currently studying with So-matome.

Speaking of So-matome, both vocabulary and kanji started going in tandem, me making progress on both, despite kanji being initially planned for later in 2022. In consequence, I re-made my entire JLPT N2 road map – after all, one month worth of studies was missing due to my break. I also included March, giving myself little material to cover in order not to discourage myself. As a result, I did better than I had anticipated: 4 chapters of Try! (planned 2), 6 chapters of vocabulary (planned 4), and 4 chapters of kanji (planned 2). Thanks to that, I could create a better, less-packed (more doable) plan for the upcoming months.

AUTHENTIC MATERIALS

I honestly felt that February went better in terms of using the authentic materials, but when you glance at my study logs, they were comparatively similar: I just focused on different media. In February I tackled another novel: ホームレス中学生 (by 田村裕).

I had been very curious about this book so I began reading it right after it arrived. Level-wise, it’s perfect for N2 students. You get a lot of N2 kanji and vocabulary but it’s not overwhelming – meaning you can read it while you’ve only just begun preparing for N2. What’s more, since the protagonist is 14 years old, the author clearly took that into consideration when writing the book, since it uses first-person narrative. As a result, the way the protagonist expresses himself is quite simple: he uses shorter sentences, without too many advanced structures. In fact, I mostly met N3 structures and N2 ones were scarce. It makes sense – an average junior high student has only started to learn how to speak like an adult. The chapters are also concise – some of them just a few pages long, making it a perfect read when you’re just getting into reading authentic materials (or have little time to read).

In February, I also got into ゆびさきと恋々, a shojo romance manga about a relationship between a deaf university student and a well-travelled polyglot (who’s her fellow uni student). For a language learner, this manga was double the fun, since other languages are used in it plus you get to learn the Japanese Sign Language. The story and the romance themselves are also engaging, so I flew through this manga and couldn’t wait for vol. 6 to come out in March – resulting in me reading it the moment I received my copy.

While in February I didn’t have much opportunity to include listening in my studies, that changed dramatically in March. I decided to get back to gaming and picked up an old favourite of mine: Prince of Stride. I played this game back in 2016, when I was still at N4 level, having finished 4 out of 6 available routes. As it’s been a while since I played this otoge (otome game), I went for a new game option, instead of using the old saves. I could immediately remember why the game felt easy those years ago – it doesn’t have narration. What characters are doing is either shown on the screen or commented on by the protagonist (in her thoughts). Thanks to that, most lines are dubbed. And, apart from sports technicalities, the lines are fairly easy to read (more on the game in my RELATIVELY EASY OTOME GAMES blog post). All in all, I spent almost 12 hours playing it that month.

As for other March resources, I got into The Real Japanese Podcast! 日本語で話すだけのラジオです！, hosted by Haruka sensei. What I love about this podcast is the fact that each episode has a topic sensei talks about. The episodes level is also displayed, making it easier to pick the right one for you. They’re relatively short, too – each varying from under 10 minutes to around 30. Haruka sensei’s voice is so pleasant to listen to and I love her life anecdotes she sneaks in. The podcast is also available on YouTube if you prefer to see the person speaking.

CONCLUSIONS

Although I spent 1 month not studying, I am quite satisfied with my results. There’s still hope I can complete all N2 preparations by August – that is when registration for the December session opens. In case the exam is cancelled this year yet again, I will have finished the preparations anyway, so I can just review the material if I had to wait one more year to tackle JLPT. The bad news is I cannot afford any more major breaks in my studies. A day or two off is perfectly fine, but taking a week off will greatly disrupt the plan I hatched. I have to keep myself in line.

What’s more, I learned my January lesson and started including more listening practice in my studies – I tried podcasts, games and anime. It’s not as much input as I’d used to have, but it’s a start. I hope to incorporate even more practice in the upcoming months. After all, I believe that you cannot limit listening to just doing mock papers a month before the real deal – that’s not nearly enough, especially on N2+ levels where the speech is more natural, its pace included.

However, there’s one more lesson I have learned in that first quarter of the year: I should’ve included kanji studies from the start. The problem isn’t their number required for this exam, but the fact that I enjoy kanji too much to wait till May. I have done a few review exercises here and there back in January, but in February and March I started going through the textbook I initially planned for May onwards – So-matome N2 kanji. I have also created a brand new kanji register, leaving my N3 and below kanji collection in the previous one. The new register is intended for N2 kanji only. There are around a thousand of them to learn (including some reviews from the N3 level), so a new notebook should suffice to fit them all. Plus fresh stationery always feels nice (and it’s red, too, like all JLPT prep books meant for N2 level!).

Since kanji joined the game plus I had a month’s break, I had to readjust my JLPT road map. As I mentioned above, I did squeeze in all the material in the 4 months leading up to August successfully. I won’t publish the new plan on the blog, however, as it will most likely change each month. I will be considering my current progress in it, meaning that if I manage to do more work than planned for the month, I will change my schedule for next month accordingly. I have already done so for April, as in March I did better than I’d expected!

One last change that occurred last month is the Anki revival. I haven’t used the program for around a year or so (the service even sent me a warning email that my account was going to be erased if I didn’t log in!), but I rebuilt my relationship with it and included daily flashcard reviews into my learning sessions – this is what I study all my studies with now.

As for April, I plan to finish 24 chapters in total. It sounds like a lot and it really is, if I think about it. However, I’m not too worried. I tend to glide through vocabulary quite smoothly (the Anki input is another thing; I have to make myself do it, otherwise it’s just not happening) and I got back to studying kanji while enjoying a nice anime in the background, like I used to during my N3 prep. Just hoping work won’t get in my way again… * sigh *

Attitude, Changes, JLPT, Languages, Motivation, Plans

WHAT HAPPENED TO 2021?

Posted on December 27, 2021December 27, 2021 by Mikuwashi

Let’s start it the cliche way: another year has almost gone and went and here I am, reflecting on what 2021 has brought. It was a tough year, to be honest. As you have probably noticed, I haven’t even written a single post apart from the resolutions one. Yet I kept faith that I would come back to blogging. So here I enter with the big announcement I am sure some of you have been waiting for: I will be taking JLPT N2 next December!
Yes, you heard that right. The time has come for yet another JLPT trip!
I am not entirely certain, however, if I manage to prepare in time but I will do my best to make things work!

Honestly, my biggest worry is whether the exam will take place at all since the December session has been cancelled for the past 2 years here. The July session happened but I cannot afford to take a day off work in summers. My work thrives when people take holidays. That’s the con of working in tourism. But, fortunately, December is usually slow thus I can take an entire weekend off, hop on a train to the capital and sit down with yet another JLPT paper in hand.
Maybe that’s also the concept that spoke to me: the last time the December session took place was when I wrote N3 level, back in 2019. After all, wouldn’t it be fun to tackle N2 when JLPT winter examination resumes?

I am currently working on a study plan for 2022 and will cover it in the next post. For today, however, I have decided to take a look and reflect on 2021’s resolutions. Which ones have I fulfilled? Which ones have I utterly failed? Time to find out!

NANOWRIMO 2021

“残念ですが…” – to put it in Japanese (meaning: “too bad, but…”), I have not taken part in NaNoWriMo this year. At least not in the traditional sense, as I have not written even a single page of a novel. I did, however, make considerable progress on my ongoing work project (which has nothing to do with novels yet it is connected with Japanese language learning itself). I cannot disclose any more details, unfortunately, as I keep this project completely confidential. I do plan to publish its results in the future, though, and I believe you might be interested in it if you are studying Japanese, too.

THE FIRST NOVEL

As I have mentioned, this year was difficult on me – both in terms of the health of my close ones as well as mourning. A fox slaughtered all my chickens in June. In September I had to put down one of my dogs when his illness went beyond curable. So I helped him the only way I could – by stopping the suffering. But I couldn’t stop my own suffering after his passing. Then, only a month later, my mother got her lab results back and they qualified her for a prompt surgery – yes, they were awful.
Despite all this, I continued to make progress on my first book. However, tackling a series (a 9-volume one, to boot!) for your first is not as simple as it would seem. Planning all volumes (more or less at least, especially when it comes to the later ones) as well as the character arcs, overall story arc and each book’s arcs, especially in a way that they all hold water when you look at the story as a whole, is not an easy feat. But the good news is that I AM making progress! I am just taking my time since I am in no rush. This is my lifelong dream but it doesn’t need to happen right this moment. I am patient and prefer to educate myself on novel writing, structure, character arcs and also glance at what the others are writing in my genre before I jump into that bottomless ocean of publications.

And that’s it. To quote myself, I didn’t “make any grandiose plans” so there is not much to contemplate about. I do have ones for 2022, though. If you want to find out about those as well as about my outlined road map to N2, stay tuned! The next post is coming around New Year’s!

Attitude, Changes, Plans

WELCOME, NEW YEAR 2021!

Posted on January 9, 2021January 9, 2021 by Mikuwashi

Happy New Year! – finally!

Had you been waiting as much as I had for 2021 to come? The previous year was tragic – both with the worldwide pandemic occurring as well as in my personal life. A lot has happened that hindered my language learning progress and, in all honestly, so it did with any other progress. For my family and me, the world stopped and our survival instinct kicked in. I won’t exaggerate if I say that the pandemic had a significant influence on both our personal and professional lives. The industry we work in was heavily impacted by the pandemic. Here, it has been under severe restrictions and currently remains under a lockdown, so we cannot operate at all. It isn’t pretty.

Which is why I didn’t simply have space to worry about making progress in Japanese, not to mention ploughing through that N2 level. Basically, it fell to the bottom of my list of priorities this past year.

My guess is it might be similar for many of you.
Does this worry me?
Not really.
I learnt not to punish myself for taking breaks in language learning, remember? I still adhere to that rule.
Yet, I feel it necessary to hold myself to account for my 2020 New Year’s resolutions. I made three, so let’s take a look at how I did.

1. PLAY PERSONA GAMES IN JAPANESE

I actually fulfilled that resolution! I have completed TWO Persona games this year – mostly during March and April’s lockdown – which are Persona 5 Royal and Persona 5 Scramble, in this order. I have started playing Persona 4 Dancing All Night as well as progressed further in my Persona 4 Golden gameplay, but I didn’t manage to finish either of them.

2. READ 1 VOLUME OF HARRY POTTER

This one’s a total fail. Although the year’s started with my reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, as I had predicted in my New Year’s Resolutions post, yet I didn’t get far after the pandemic hit. I only managed to read it until Harry reaches the Leaky Cauldron and then discontinued it. Guess last year I didn’t fancy reading Harry that much – that also included listening to my favourite HP podcasts out there. I’m sooo behind!

3. JOIN A CONVERSATION CLASS

Again, this point didn’t work out at all. Even though I had secured my future teacher on italki and was supposed to start the classes back in February, after I got my positive results from JLPT, my mom broke her leg, unfortunately. I had to take care of her in the hospital and also of everything else while she was admitted, so I didn’t have time to think about taking classes. Then March came – and we all know what it brought. I have already mentioned that our industry got hit pretty hard – which meant reducing any unnecessary costs. And thus, my lessons never happened. Nor they will in the nearest future as the situation hasn’t changed much.

Although most of my resolutions ended up in a failure, there were some bright points in the previous year that made it feel a bit more successful.

WHAT I DID MANAGE TO DO IN 2020

1. COMPLETE NANOWRIMO CHALLENGE

I believe this is the brightest and most vital point of last year. I wrote 50k of my future debut novel! I had started prepping for it in October, taking a month before the actual challenge to come up with the outline and to flesh out the characters. Even though the 50k that I’d written is nowhere near the conclusion to the story and I also already know that serious changes to the outline need to be made, I’m still proud that I stuck it out and wrote every day in November. After over a month of the draft setting in, I’m about to begin editing it any day now – which will result in heavy plot makeover and a new draft.

2. I DIDN’T CATCH COVID-19

I wear a mask. I disinfect every time I get into the car or come back home. I don’t use public transport. I do shopping 1-2 times a week only. I Skype. I stay at home.
I didn’t catch coronavirus nor had I tested positive for the antibodies. Which I pride myself in, especially that my mom is post-surgery and thus in the vulnerable group.
She didn’t catch it, either. Thank goodness.

3. I READ AND LISTENED TO A LOT IN JAPANESE

Upon checking my GoodReads page, I noticed that I actually read quite a bit in Japanese this year – I counted 35 mangas! Half of that number is one series, actually – it’s called “Life” by Suenobu Keiko (20 volumes). I highly recommend it! It’s a teen drama about bullying and standing up to your abusers.
I also listened to Japanese radio programs often – I have a list of my favourites, but I can’t recommend 超A&G+ channel enough – it includes tons of programs hosted by famous Japanese seiyuu (their schedule is available on the website, if you’re interested) and it can be listened to even outside Japan (I’m connecting to it from Europe and the player on their website works no problem)! My personal favourite remains Saturday’s エジソン – a pop culture broadcast with Eguchi Takuya and Takahashi Minami.

So, what about the resolutions for this year?

I’m not making any grandiose plans. My greatest goal is to tackle NaNoWriMo again as well as to finish the draft of my first novel and move towards its publication. Apart from that, I hope to survive 2021 and that life will, mostly, get back to normal as the year unfolds. I hope it does for everyone else out there, too.

About me, Attitude, Changes, Motivation, Plans, Reading, Video games

LONG TIME NO SEE! HERE I AM, AGAIN!

Posted on July 4, 2020July 4, 2020 by Mikuwashi

Hi there! It’s Mikuwashi! お久しぶりですね！

It’s been quite a long time since I last posted so most probably you have been wondering where I had gone or whether I intend to continue this blog at all. The answer is very much “Yes”! The truth is, life has gone in my way and changed a lot of things. On February 16th my Mom had had an accident: she broke her leg and had to be hospitalised. As we both live and run a business together, everything fell on my back to pick it up and handle alone. Later, as it is probably for a lot of other people, the coronavirus hit and life changed further with uncertain future overshadowing (especially in our business industry). Currently, our situation’s slowly getting back to normal so I can get back to focusing on stuff I enjoyed and did pre-accident and pre-pandemic. Before I start writing other Japanese-related posts, however, I thought you deserve an update.

Many of you asked me about my JLPT N3 results. I did post them on my Instagram account along with the screenshot but I will reveal them here as well.

I will be very immodest saying this but the truth is I did great! I passed the exam and my overall score was 164 out of 180 points! I did best in the listening section, snatching a perfect score, yet my grammar and reading sections points weren’t that much worse! I got 49 out of 60 points from the Language Knowledge (that is, for vocabulary, kanji and grammar questions) as well as 55 out of 60 points in the reading section (that means I just answered one question wrong)! Obviously, I couldn’t be happier with my results and I personally think of them as a perfect conclusion to my N3 studies.

Speaking of studying, here comes bad news. Over the last few months, although I did keep in touch with Japanese, I rarely studied to make progress into N2 studies. I haven’t started them at all, honestly. I mostly read and played games in Japanese, quite extensively. I hope that because my Mom’s slowly recovering and the situation’s also gradually getting back to how it used to be, I would be able to sit at my desk again and study towards that N2 level.

Here I am very pleased to announce that I have made significant progress when it comes to reading! I started to read a lot and have been beating my personal records for the amount I’m able to read – as of now, my record is 6 manga volumes in one day! I have never thought I would be able to overcome that fatigue that hits you after you input a certain amount of Japanese during one day. I guess the most helping factor was me starting Persona 4 Golden as well as Persona 5 Royal in Japanese – a game franchise I had conquered in English before, therefore I didn’t have to worry about understanding the plot but still spend quite many hours a day playing those titles. As a result, I have finished 2 Persona games now (i.e. Persona 5 Royal and Persona 5 Scramble) and there’s only one title left for me to finish this year so I complete the New Year’s resolution I had made in one of the blog posts back in January.

Speaking of reading, I have started reading aloud quite a lot and grew to notice that actually, this is something that also boosts your reading skills. It all started with a Reading Aloud Challenge which was held on a Japanese learners discord group I had joined a few months prior. I decided to take part in the challenge and grew to enjoy reading live, much to my surprise. It was very stressful at first but I’m gradually getting used to it and thus enjoying it more and more with every session. Much recommended!

As for new resources I started to utilise recently, I have to mention Japanese seiyuu radio programs for sure. I discovered 超A&G+ radio channel (which is available online) and found out that many of my favourite male seiyuu actually host their own programs there! They aren’t easy to understand, as they speak with natural pace as well as they use a lot of vocabulary I don’t know. That doesn’t faze me, however, and I enjoy listening to those a lot! I even found the courage to write a fan letter to one of the programs and actually sent it! I felt so ashamed a few days after I had done it and the letter wasn’t read during the program (the hosts read a few fan letters aloud and answer them during the program), too, but it was an experience I had never gone through before (not even in my native tongue!), yet I found it refreshing and pleasant. I also felt a little proud that I sent it, gotta admit.

So, as the summer starts, here begins the next step of my Japanese journey. I hope you’ll hop on the ride and will be able to enjoy it with me. See you soon with a new post!

About me, Attitude, Changes

NEW YEAR, NEW MORNINGS

Posted on February 3, 2020February 3, 2020 by Mikuwashi

For the past few years, I had real trouble with my sleeping patterns. I had always considered myself to be a classic night owl – that is, a person who goes to bed late and wakes up late. Given the fact that first, my university schedule and then my job allowed such a lifestyle, I never tried to change it. What is more, I could still remember how much I hated getting up for school as a child and a teen. I was never rested enough and my brain usually started functioning properly around 10 am.

However, maintaining such a routine for the past few years, when I hit my late 20s, started to backfire on me. I didn’t have as much energy or didn’t regenerate as fast as I used to. Going to bed in the early hours meant I had to sleep well till noon – which is not possible every day when you have pets that need feeding and walking and/or a full-time job. I was often disturbed by outside noises or my family bustling around woke me up, too. All this resulted in a very unhappy and sleepy person that I had become. I got grumpy and pouty in the mornings, lazy and napping throughout the whole day – because I was constantly lacking sleep and necessary energy.

The more my 30th birthday was closing in, the more desperate I became for some kind of a change. I think I crossed the line over last December when we had holidays at work. My sleeping pattern changed again, I went to sleep around 5 or 6 am and woke up at 3 pm – I had time off so I could do that. I probably don’t have to tell you how dangerous that was during wintertime, going to bed when the sun was rising and waking up when it was getting dark outside. It really f*cked up something inside me, living almost without sunlight for around 2 weeks.

In consequence, when the new year started, I realised that if I don’t do something, it is going to get really bad. I had this feeling of impending doom of some sort – it could probably have been my health or common sense speaking.

Luckily, on the morning of January 1st, I woke up unusually early. It wasn’t super early, but 9 am was definitely earlier than my typical 12 or 1 pm. Due to the fact that I went to bed late after New Year’s Eve celebration, I felt tired. Normally I would go to bed to take a nap, but I stayed up. Thanks to that, I was so tired at 10 pm that I went straight to bed. On January 2nd I woke up a little past 6 am of my own volition, with no alarm clocks or crying pets responsible for that. Just my body clock.

Having had straight 8 hours of sleep, I felt more rested than usual. I didn’t become a volcano of energy all of a sudden, but I surely felt different. Not so angry, not so tired. In split second I decided that I have to abuse that new state of affairs. I got up so that I wouldn’t fall asleep again and tried to stay up throughout the whole day so I could hit the hay before midnight.

Unfortunately, I had a crisis between 5 and 6 pm. It was the standard time when I took a nap. My eyelids were failing me and begging to go to bed to sleep. However, I knew that if I gave in, I could forget about changing my sleeping pattern. I was sitting on an armchair and finally decided to succumb to my body requesting recharging – but on the armchair. I laid my head on the armrest (our living room armchairs have such wide armrests that you can place a plate or a mug on it no problem – I even keep my 13” laptop there and it doesn’t fall off) and dozed off. I was able to kill two birds with one stone – I took a nap, but my bent position was so uncomfortable that I woke up around 30 minutes later. I still felt sleepy but rested enough to survive till 10 pm. And so I did.

Later, each and every day was getting easier. I discovered some new things about me and my body. That little change sparked other small changes in several toxic habits of mine. Below I’m going to describe what I noticed about myself thanks to altering my biological clock, week by week for the first month.

WEEK 1 (Jan 1 – Jan 7)

I enjoy the silence and studying in silence (in contrast to playing some BGM on my studying playlist or watching a show in the background like it was in the past). And early mornings actually work in my favour – most of my family isn’t up yet, so I get some peace and quiet until they are. This little observation also had an influence on my Japanese studies – I started to study in the morning, not in the evening like it used to be, so I can “tick it off” and shift my focus onto other things that need my attention, not necessarily connected to studying.
What is more, I have better study sessions in the mornings. I can do more in less time because I’m full of energy and thus more productive. The fact that you have the whole day before you also contributes to that increased productivity – since you’re not in a rush and have plenty of time to study what you want to, you tend to take your sweet time and enjoy it more. Also, your brain isn’t overloaded with your job or school yet, so why not use its potential to make some serious progress until your energy burns out?
I also noticed that the days are so long! I’m actually eager to go to bed and have a proper rest at the end of the day because I already had enough! That also counts for having enough time to do everything that you planned or simply had to do on that day.
I abuse my morning energy doing the heaviest work then – that means writing, studying or brainstorming. Later, I work and in the evenings I relax with a TV series or a book (but a book in English or Polish, not Japanese – I read in Japanese in the mornings, as a part of my study session).
I love sunrises much more than sunsets (and I used to believe that it was the opposite)! I can’t get enough of them (even though that by the time this will be posted, it will already be a whole month of admiring sunrise!).
Better productivity in terms of my studies is one thing, but I also noticed that productivity at my job also increased! Because I get some time to myself in the mornings, I’m much more eager to go to work and do my job. I also do things faster (up to a certain moment – but that’s one of the observations I had later – at first I was super excited to be able to stick to my resolution at all, I guess).
Because I get my quiet alone time in the mornings when everybody’s still asleep, I’m more content and happy throughout the day and get less angry, actually. I’m a person who naturally pursues solitude at some point in the day and if I don’t get my daily dose of ‘solitary confinement’, my short fuse kicks in and everything starts to irritate me quite fast, especially human contact.

WEEK 2 (Jan 8 – Jan 15)

Getting up gets more difficult, I’m not feeling as rested as in the first week, but I have no problems getting off the bed (thanks for the dogs). The problem is that I wake up while being under the impression that it can’t be 6 am yet because I feel so sleepy. Nothing has changed, I go to bed around 10 pm, but wake up 6:30-ish am rather than at 6 o’clock like in the first week.
I started being less productive in the mornings. I don’t feel like studying at all at times, so lazying around also happens but I still try to read a chapter in Japanese daily (which works for most ‘lazy’ days).
I’m still bewitched by sunrise.
I can keep up with work till 9 pm (that happens on Tuesdays and Wednesdays) but I’m consistent and go to bed at 10 pm even if I finished worked barely an hour before. For now, working long hours have no substantial influence on my tiredness and falling asleep fast. It means that even though I am still in the middle of work at around 9 pm, I don’t feel tired or sleepy. It kind of hits me later, when I finish work, so it doesn’t hamper me falling asleep.
My bedtime reading routine is a lifesaver and I have read 4 books (books as in genuine books, not mangas) so far thanks to it. I also bought more books because of it…

WEEK 3 (Jan 16 – Jan 23)

I got used to waking up early and I feel guilty when I laze around in bed.
I sometimes feel tired when I wake up. However, I found out that it’s probably connected with eating right before bed. Basically, if I eat past 6 pm when I go to bed before 10 pm, I feel tired (as my body spends the night digesting rather than replenishing the energy).
I get even lazier in the mornings, I don’t know where the time flies sometimes.
Also, the weather’s getting worse (it was quite sunny in the first 2 weeks so I was getting a lot of sun exposure when I sat at the kitchen table). Exposing yourself to sunlight is yet another thing I noticed that has a considerable influence on me. It boosts my energy levels tremendously and immediately puts me in a good mood. If the weather’s more cloudy, it works less (but still does, a little). For this reason, I try to sit at the kitchen table (which is right next to a big window facing the east, so I get to ‘look the sun in the face’) rather than laze around on the sofa – it’s located further into the living room, away from the windows. Also, sitting at a table triggers productivity – I’m less tempted to browse social media and prefer to write something (a blog post or the draft of my novel) or study Japanese instead.
Energy outbursts still occur and I can still do a lot of stuff in such outbursts. I also noticed that being productive is dependent on you actually making yourself do it – sleeping enough and getting up early just facilitate doing stuff faster so that you can have the rest of the day off.
I’m having minor trouble falling asleep, I suspect that it can be connected to lack of exercise. I mostly get my exercise by walking my dogs and working in the garden. Obviously, in winter it isn’t possible to do the gardening outside. However, most winters I was able to overcome this disadvantage by shovelling the snow instead. Yet, this winter is so mild that we have got little snow which didn’t require much shovelling. As a result, I had to remove excessive snow maybe two or three times only (and the snow season usually starts in November)! In winter, I also don’t walk my dogs as far as I do during other seasons (for instance, in summer I walk around 4-5 km a day with my dogs! Which is a big number because as I’m living in the mountains, going for a ‘walk’ actually means hiking), so I do less exercise.
My dogs eat earlier and I shifted their mealtimes by an hour, this way I can walk them after their dinner before the sun sets (which adds up to me doing some exercise).
I also eat breakfast regularly now. I start off with my usual morning coffee, of course, but approximately an hour later I cook myself breakfast. I noticed that because I eat in the morning, I’m not as tempted to snack in the evening as I used to. The only exception to this rule are days with long hours at work – as I get short breaks in-between meeting clients, I have little time to eat anything and then end up catching up on food after work. This is why I know I have to start preparing my lunch and dinner for such days in advance, so I just have to heat it up and wolf down on it. But here’s when early mornings come in useful! Apart from studies, I also have time to do some shopping and prep the meals for later, which wasn’t possible when I used to get up around noon.

WEEK 4 (Jan 24 – Jan 31)

I have finished establishing my bedtime routine. It starts at roughly 7-8 pm and ends between 9-10 pm. I start off with airing my bedroom out. Then I turn all of my electronic devices off (meaning that browsing social media or even using an online dictionary is off-limits past that step) and then I read something – a book or a manga, its language does not really matter (though I feel it works even better if I read something in Polish). After 8 pm I walk my dogs for the last time. Then I come back to prep myself for sleeping, that means taking a bath, doing my evening skin and teeth care, and changing into my nightgown. Then I read again until my eyelids start to droop. It usually happens past 9 pm. I listen to my body and go to bed, just closing the windows before I hit the hay. It usually takes me less than 10 mins to fall asleep this way.
I shouldn’t eat food past 6 pm and definitely not something rich in saturated fats (like my favourite potato crisps), I sleep the worst on such nights.
I feel most rested when I go to bed between 9 and 10 pm and get 9 hours of sleep. That seems to be my optimal amount. Consequently, I need to start my prep for bed routine around 8 pm if I want to finish it during that preferable time period.
Weather also influences my energy levels and sleep. I sleep worse on windy or frosty nights as well as during full moon (but I had known that one before I even started this experiment, to be honest; it became much more noticeable during its course, that’s all). It’s easier to start the day when it’s sunny or at most partially cloudy so that I’m able to catch a bit of the sun on my face.
Getting up early already became a habit: my internal body clock wakes me up between 6:30 and 7:30 even if I went to bed around midnight. I also feel guilty when it’s past 10 pm and I’m still not in bed or during the final reading phase.

I hope that, if you’re struggling with your own sleeping pattern or daily routine, those reflections would spark changes for you and in you as well. I wish you very good luck if you want to repeat what I had done in the last 30 days. Don’t give up if you fail to stick to the routine a day or two – just get back to it every time and work on changing it! The results are so worth it!