This has been a very busy week with work and obligations, but I was quietly satisfied to see my LingQ word count cross the 25,000-word mark today. While this counts individual words and not word families, it’s a small victory that reminds me I’m making incremental progress toward proficiency.

While listening to the Tagesschau, I was able to understand most of the content without relying on visual or image cues. My working vocabulary was sufficient to bridge the gaps of the unknown words. This moment brought genuine happiness—a profound joy that is difficult to describe adequately.

I find the best expression for this drive in Thich Nhat Hanh’s How to Dream:

Volition is the driving motivation behind our thinking, speech, and actions. It determines everything. Everyone of us has a strong goal for our life. We want to achieve something. We feel a ball of energy in us, a tremendous, powerful source of energy. We want to feel truly alive.

For now, I will happily follow this internal volition and enjoy the daily dopamine hit it provides, regardless of how ridiculous the goal of learning German might seem.