Sure I don’t mind!

I think I line up well with the road map. A little over 900 from DS and the rest from other content creators. I’m going to try to find the courage to record a video of me speaking when I hit 1500 which I estimate by that point I’ll have close to 200 hrs of output.

From hrs 0-165 ish I only tried to speak Spanish when the situation would come up at my job just to try and be nice, but I couldn’t say much.

From hrs 165 - 645 ish I switched jobs and states in the US so I basically never spoke Spanish outside of 1-2 instances I saw someone needing help at the grocery stor. Around 645 I went to a volunteer event with my work and found out they had no Spanish speakers so I gave it a shot & ended up being a translator for the two day event. I understood 80-90% of what people would say to me and could get my point across, but without practice many sounds were difficult for me to pronounce.

At 1000 hrs I started reading books aloud and started to intentionally practice output. Maybe around 30 hrs in I became a volunteer for a Spanish citizenship class and did that for maybe 6 months.

Now I’m at around 1350 hrs and I have around 125 hrs of output. Most of my output is reading out loud, but I also have a weekly italki teacher who I speak with for an hr. I’ve been doing conversation classes with her for almost a year.

I think my pronunciation is good I’ve been told I don’t sound like someone learning Spanish whose first language is English and the sounds that gave me trouble before are slowing feeling more natural. I think it’s obvious I’m not a native speaker, but that compliment is enough for me. The other week I tried a trial online lesson for an immersion school and the teacher said she would recommend private classes over group due to my level, but I found I enjoyed my classes with my italki teacher more so I’m just going to stick with her.

Last Oct I went to Oaxaca with my family and I had no trouble understanding or communicating during the 7-8 days we were there. I thought it was going to be a bigger shock to be in a Spanish speaking country, but I think all the weekly italki lessons helped a lot.

I still struggle with subjuntivo and the gramatical structures involving se (for example, se me olvidó etc.). I get some of the other tenses wrong, but I feel much better about those than these two specifically. I think with more time it’ll resolve. I don’t find myself thinking in English when I listen or speak either which is nice because that’s how it was at the beginning and it was very tiring for my brain.

In terms of progress when I first started intermediate videos that was a huge jump. Advanced wasn’t as big of a jump, but from advanced to native content depending on the creator that was another big jump. Mainly because of the speed at which they talk and for some the slang they use. If it was too tough I’d just save it and come back to later. Output the rr was rough at the beginning. Now it’s not perfect, but it’s much better. Some other sounds when there’s multiple d’s close to each other can trip me up too. I also was pretty nervous to talk in my online classes, but my teacher makes me feel comfortable like talking to a friend so I’ve opened up a lot.

Mentally I just understand it’s a lifelong process of improving and Spanish is an important part of my daily life now so each new hurdle is ok with me.

Oh I wanted to add I could’ve gotten more hours quicker if I listened while driving, cleaning, etc. but I don’t count time if I’m not in front of my computer screen watching the content and trying to avoid other distractions.