A Life Update and Content Changes

Some things you should know going forward

Hello, aspiring polyglot! This post is really only relevant for April 30, 2024, so if you have come back and are reading through this but it is more than a week later, you won’t really get much from this. This is just an explanation for the current and past subscribers who have come to expect a certain level of consistency from me.

For those who don’t know, this is a one man operation and if I am unwell or injured, content will necessarily slow down. This year two major events have happened that have caused me to step away and I feel that you deserve an explanation, as well as some reassurance that this content is not going anywhere.

At the end of February, my wife and I were in a very bad car accident. Here are some pictures:

This was the first thing that took me away and you may have noticed a hiccup in content, though it was safeguarded by the fact that I had written ahead quite a few weeks. Of course, when I was writing ahead I planned to continue writing ahead and this stopped that temporarily. I am still playing catchup, but then something else happened. I was bitten not once, but twice by this spider:

Black widow venom is extremely potent and for all intents and purposes it paralyzed me for three days and the latent affects of the medicine that was prescribed to me are still causing some issues. I bring this up not to excuse myself, but to explain that there is a reason for the slowing content and these things will not pull me away from this mission we are all on together. It definitely slowed me down, but things will be back to the normal Tuesday/Thursday schedule beginning next week. In fact, tomorrow I’ve got a free post already lined up!

Second Language Strategies is still a one person project. Surviving these things this year has impacted my perspective in a few ways, but I’ll only share one here. I don’t know what the normal reaction to surviving a deadly car crash is, I don’t know what the normal reaction to being pumped full of one of the most potent venoms in the world is. To me, the fact that I’m still here means my work is not finished.

I am glad you are along for the ride and I apologize for the lapse, but there is still much to be done. Impacting 1 million people takes time, but we are already seeing the power of learning a new language and the ripples that are being made within the community. Whether it is people reaching out to tell me they dreamt in their target language or people telling me how happy they are to speak with their parents in the parent’s native language, lives are changing for the better and I am grateful to have my place in it.

Until next time!

- Odin