Marathon: progress up to October 3rd

I've noticed my first post was dated October 2nd, but it's the 3rd here in Japan. Here's a summary of my progress so far:

I started my current attempt to learn kanji some time in August this year. By September 3rd (the first time I made a note in my diary) I'd written 69 mnemonic stories (one "story" usually lasting only a couple of sentences). Progress was slow from then, averaging about 1 a day. On September 22nd, I decided I'd do 20 a day, come hell or high water, which I've kept to since then, although on one day I only finished 11, and had to do 29 the next day. Up to now I've done 377 stories.

I think I've gotten to a stage where I'm excited to get into my 20 kanji as soon as I wake up in the morning, and get them done. If I don't start the day really organized, I end up studying late and realize I've wasted my freetime and done nothing much except work and study. If I finish early, I have time to do other things, and I can enjoy my free time a lot more, feeling like I've earned it.

This morning, I woke up at 6:00 am (usually I get up 7:30), and I thought "Wow, I have so much extra time to study!" Just thinking about it made my heart beat faster, and I got up and got to it. Even going slowly and stopping for breakfast, doing housework and playing with my kid, I managed to finish before 11:30 am, which is why I had time to start this blog.

As I was doing today's mnemonics, I realized that I've written hundreds of scenarios that sound like utter rubbish if you don't know what they are for. For example: "Gregor Clegane casts ashes into Zoolander's dad's face in coal mine". Gregor Clegane is a character from the fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. His nickname's "The Mountain". Casting ashes is an action taken from the movie The Big Lebowski where John Goodman's character throws Donny's ashes into the Dude's face. Zoolander is a movie, the titular character of which has a father who is a coal miner. These are menmonics for: moutain, ash and coal. The kanji which means "coal" consists of the kanji for mountain on top of the kanji for ash. Makes sense when explained, but I had a sense of dread that I've wasted the last couple of months, and especially several hours of the last couple of weeks, just writing meaningless jibberish that won't mean a thing. Must be a sign of study stress.

On the other hand, I've also been dreading that I will lose my notebooks, which contain all the mnemonics I haven't committed to memory yet. I've been wandering if I can insure them.

Speaking of notebooks, I finished one small notebook today, which is kind of a milestone for me.

Also, I changed the order in which I've been studying the kanji. I already have the first 200 kanji learned, and I couldn't bear to go back and do them again. So I started around the middle of Kanji ABC. But then I found I was always going back to earlier kanji or graphemes that help make up the later ones, and sometimes I wasn't writing the reference notes that I need to find any given mnemonic in my notebook, which was leading to a lot of confustion. So, having already finished over 200 new mnemonics, I've decided to go back to the start of the book and work through it in order.