I know that it seems like I literally fell off the earth recently but so much has happened since my last post in November. As you can tell from the title of this post, I am making the big move to the land of Fire & Ice. Gunnar and I have worked tirelessly to make this happen and it is such an awesome feeling to accomplish this on our own terms. I connected with Iceland and its people on my very first visit back in December 2013, and now I get the opportunity to further explore this beautiful place as a resident. Before I jump ahead to that part, I want to recap on how I have gotten to this point and where I am in my polyglot journey. 🙂
The Recap
Life has been super busy! On top of working full-time, being President of Humorous Toastmasters, serving as a community board member, trying to fit in workouts at least twice a week (ha!), and finding time to breathe, I have been covertly planning my move to Iceland (muah ha ha ha)!!! Ok, it wasn’t that big of a secret but most people had no idea that I planned to move before June 2016, especially my co-workers.
Plus, 2015 felt like the never-ending story of “picking up the pieces,” and unfortunately my language journey was derailed after this incident that I wrote about during one of my visits to Iceland. The main culprit of my derailment was my ego, and oh what an ego I had!!! In my naivetĂ©, I figured that all of my studying (six months worth) would prove that I was quite adept at picking up Icelandic and that I was ready to waltz into the country and understand most of the words in a conversation. I am all for having confidence and believing in one’s abilities but my ego was overinflated and when my balloon burst, I fell back to earth like a ton of bricks. With my face firmly planted in the rock hard earth, I questioned if I would ever be able to peel myself up from my failure and get back into the swing of things.
Everyone fails and there is beauty in the struggle, but before you see the beauty there is a whole lot of ugly. I still feel pangs of guilt every now and again when I think about how easy it was for me to let one incident detract me from pursuing my goal. However, hindsight is 20/20 and I learned a lot about myself. I’ve grown thicker skin and I’m learning to check my ego at the door when I am trying new things.
What’s next?
2016 is already shaping up to be a fascinating year full of change and wonderment. I went through a lot of ups and downs in my language journey last year and I expect to encounter many more this year, but at least I will be able to manage my expectations better. I will be kidding myself if I think that I will be less busy in the future. The fact is I like keeping busy, which means I will always have an “excuse” for me to not study or write a blog post, but if I want real progress I have to be consistent.
Now that I have more realistic expectations, you might be wondering, “How do you intend to prevent falling off the wagon in the future?” Great question! As I prepare to move to Iceland in about month, I plan to use this time to build an editorial calendar (so necessary!!!), set up a routine for studying, follow that routine and once again document my experience on this blog. Oh, I can just hear the excuses piling up in my head right now. “But you have so much to do because you are moving” and “Maybe you should worry about this later when you are settled in Iceland,” my Excuse Monster will say. While those excuses are valid, there will never be a perfect time for me to do this so I might as well do it now!
Plus, learning Icelandic isn’t impossible and it is getting a wee bit easier with the increasing amount of language learning tools and programs that I have read about or dabbled in. I am really excited to share those with you, but first, I need an editorial calendar and routine!
Holy crap! You’re moving to Iceland. Why now?
Besides really missing my partner who lives in Iceland, I was offered a position at an adventure tour company in the country. Of course, this took months of looking and sending out CVs but it was totally worth the work. Also, I think this provides a great opportunity for me to revitalize my Icelandic studying and be able to use what I have learned on a daily basis. New York has been my home for my entire life and moving to a totally different place will be an awesome adventure.
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Þakka þér fyrir að lesa og sjáumst fljótlega (Thank you for reading and see you soon)!
