I have started studying English again. I lived in the U.S. for almost 8 years and also in the Philippines for 4 and half years. The 8-year period of my life in the U.S. was the culmination of my English study and I can even be proud of myself for staying laser-focused for such a long time. First of all, please allow me to explain how I spent the 8 years. (Please note that I might sprinkle some vocab or expressions across the entire post that I want to use for my practice, so please feel free to ignore any minor mistakes even if you find it a bit out of context. I just want to use, recall, and cement them in my brain ^^) I studied English for at least 8-10 hours every day no matter how busy I was. I even studied 13 hours a day at least 3 days a week, and my favorite time was to reward myself for studying for a long time with an hour long onli lesson that was usually a bit out of my budget or with something like an English dictionary or book on phrasal verbs/idiomatic expressions. I would listen to podcast or radio whenever I walk, eat, drive, or take a public transportation, or I would just think to myself or talk to myself all in English whenever I had nothing to listen to. I would wake up in the morning opening up a notebook to review what I learned the day before, and I would go to sleep (or fall asleep) while studying English. I would always make sure that I will not waste even a second doing anything that is irrelevant to my study. Then, I moved to the Philippines. When I was in the U.S., I was working with my boss and a few of my colleagues, so we were able to share the burden of our workload we had to accomplish. But in the Philippines, I was all by myself and had to fend for myself with everything from work to cooking meals three times a day for the entire period. So I stopped studying English due to the scarcity of my free time. My priority has shifted from improving my English to excelling in my work. The joy to earn a tangible (continue to my next post)