by janafadness on May 2, 2012
Everyone, I have good news: I am still alive and well! I apologize for the lack of updates, and I want to thank anyone who is still around to read this after the past month of my near-absence from the Internet. Your support is appreciated.
There are a couple of reasons why I haven’t updated. First of all, to be perfectly honest, I just haven’t been feeling that motivated to write posts or make videos recently. The truth is that this blogging thing is a lot of work, and I was starting to feel like it was just kind of sucking energy out of me. I wasn’t really sure anymore why I was doing it, or how exactly I was supposed to be benefiting from it. And I was feeling confused about a lot of the things I’d shared here, and what the point of it all was. [Read the rest]
by janafadness on April 3, 2012
I’ve had a lot of thoughts floating around in my head lately, but they’re all so jumbled together that I haven’t been able to get any of them out into a blog post. So I decided to do something different and just record a video.
Let me know what you think! 
[See the comments]
by janafadness on March 23, 2012
As you may know, for the past couple of months I’ve been posting a “Russian word of the day” on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. I felt like I wasn’t being consistent enough in my Russian studies, and I thought a “word of the day” would be a good way to hold myself accountable for learning at least one thing in Russian every day.
[Read the rest]
by janafadness on March 11, 2012
I’ve gotten to a point in my life where I can say “I’m a really happy person”. It hasn’t been easy, and this happiness isn’t something that was just handed to me– I had to work for it. And even now, I have to work in order to stay happy.
I don’t think it’s possible to be in a constant state of bliss all the time. Actually, I’m not sure if it’s even desirable. Ups and downs are a natural part of life, and it’s because we have the downs that we can really appreciate how wonderful the ups are, isn’t it? [Read the rest]
by janafadness on March 7, 2012
I thought I’d end my series on Barcelona with a few of my favorite pictures of some of the places I visited. I’m no professional photographer, but still I think a lot of these turned out quite well. Enjoy! 
[Click here to see the pictures]
by janafadness on March 4, 2012
One of my favorite travel bloggers, Wandering Earl, wrote this article about traveling alone. Earl basically says that even if you travel somewhere on your own, it’s so easy to meet people when you get there that you’ll never really be alone, and so there’s no reason to worry if you have no one to go with you. My own travel experiences so far have confirmed this, and so I wasn’t at all concerned about going to Barcelona by myself for ten days and not knowing anyone there. I knew that I would know people there. [Read the rest]
by janafadness on February 29, 2012
You may be wondering what’s happened to me. I haven’t updated this blog for two weeks, I haven’t been answering all your e-mails and messages, and I haven’t been posting my Russian word of the day on Facebook. Well… What can I say? Barcelona. That’s what happened.
[Read the rest]
by janafadness on February 15, 2012
I got some interesting comments on my language learning method post and video, especially after sharing it on the How to Learn Any Language Forum (link to relevant thread). I have been frequenting this forum for years, and it’s where I’ve gotten many of my ideas about language learning. It’s full of experienced language learners who don’t hesitate to express their strong opinions, so I should have known I was asking for it by coming out of the shadows where I’d been lurking and actually sharing my own thoughts here! There’s no denying that it stings a bit when people criticize your ideas, because it kind of feels like they’re criticizing a part of you. But I’m not someone who enjoys arguing for the sake of arguing (or even for the sake of generating traffic!), and I think there’s too much arguing already going on in the language-learning community anyway. I’m not here to set myself up as some kind of expert and defend my own ideas like the gospel, but rather to encourage more people to learn languages– not necessarily in my way, but in whatever way works best for them. I may be an experienced language learner, but I’m still a learner all the same, and I know I still have a lot to learn both about languages and about language learning. So I checked my ego at the door and tried my best to objectively consider the criticisms. Upon doing so, I must humbly admit that the so-called “method” I attempted to describe in my last post still leaves a lot to be desired. [Read the rest]
