Learning Dutch

This last March, I found a listing for an awesome job in the Netherlands. It was a travel writing job which is The Dream, as far as I was concerned. It didn’t require that I learn Dutch; in fact, the listing stated that the office worked exclusively in English. But I decided to learn some as a show of sincerity and to illustrate my willingness to relocate. Ten days later, I had completed an A1 class and learned over 500 words in the vocabulary app Drops.

I didn’t get the job.

But I had fallen down the rabbit hole.

Not only did I now want to relocate to The Netherlands, but I also had a new hyper fixation for my ADHD brain.

Without the job to inspire me, I adapted a much more relaxed learning style but kept advancing and improving my Dutch. It was a game to see how far past the “minimum” goals I get for myself. I was racing against past me. Can I do better than yesterday me? Can I score better? Can I spend more time in the language? This kept me motivated.

I have found that I need something to motivate me, to keep me going; otherwise, I will get distracted by the new shiny.

This is especially true when the thing I’m trying to do is monotonous or boring - like in the early stages of learning a language.

So then there was another travel writer job listing. So I sprinted again.

This time I decided to “throw my hat over the wall”, as it were. I had managed to almost get to an intermediate level; I was tantalizingly close to finishing. So I put “intermediate Dutch” on my resume. Then I had to work my butt off to make that true. I was halfway through my B1 class when I found out I didn’t get the job.

Never has failing to get a job been so productive.

I’m setting a new goal, starting a new sprint this week.

I will try to get myself all the way to mid-intermediate by the end of this week. Then next week, when I start my B2 level class, I will be more confident as I apply to jobs in The Netherlands and Belgium.

I’m just going to keep throwing my hat and then chasing after it until I reach my goal of conversational fluency.

Wish me luck.