日本語の練習が楽しみでしょう

I got a lot out of my study of Japanese even though I never really achieved much mastery of the spoken language. I really enjoyed the mystique of a language based upon a completely different set of glyphs and grammatical constructs. At the center of my enjoyment was a fascination with kanji. To me, these characters are miniature, self-contained works of art. They usually carry all kinds of additional interesting information beyond meaning and pronunciation. And since there are 1,881 of them, with at least several hundred common enough that you can't expect to read much Japanese without knowing them, learning to read and write them certainly exercises the memory. At one time, I had a minor obsession with acquiring the muscle memory to be able to make the strokes in the right order and in just the right relative positions.

But I no longer study or practice Japanese at all. I gave it up without much of an attempt to make time for it. Now I find myself a bit regretful that I allowed my Japanese to become so rusty. In fact, I am pretty much rusty in any number of disciplines in which I formerly exhibited at least some proficiency. I think that until recently, I had been content to chalk this up to having a career and other activities which occupied most of my attention and time, not leaving me much time to practice yesterday's skills. I also had this idea that it is generally understood that this rustiness is just something that happens the further away one gets from "school." But having actually stated these reasons and thought about them, I find they don't sit well. The fact that I didn't really try to make a little time to maintain any sort of academic study is disappointing -- even more so since I partly used my impression of other people's reasons for something I did to excuse myself. I'm not here to trash myself, but I think I can do better, especially when it comes to things I already know I enjoy.

If I don't bother to maintain and develop some of my knowledge, what was the point of my past effort to acquire it? And it's true I don't have time to study the way I did in college, but that doesn't mean I don't have any time at all. A little bit of practice or study will probably go a long way, and is a hell of a lot better than nothing.

Sorry Excuses: "Not enough time." "People don't stay in school forever, and their skills just get rusty."
Verdict: lazy and bad attitude
Prognosis: Pretty good. I think I have to convince myself that starting more or less at the beginning is okay if that's what I have to do -- and remind myself there's a way to have fun doing this. Time is a legitimate concern, so making just a modest commitment at first is probably best.