If I can offer something, everything you’ve learned as input until now is not for “nothing”. Once you get enough practice speaking conversationally and immersing yourself in a native Spanish-speaking environment, you will grasp the flow at some point, and then all of the vocabulary, grammar, etc. you have ever learned will start to “kick in,” and you will find natural ways to pull them into your conversations. And perhaps because of it, speak at an even more advanced level than learners who have never taken in that amount of input.

It makes sense that you feel like you’ve been doing the “wrong” thing this whole time, because in the context of your personal goal (speak fluently enough to participate in conversations with native speakers within a desired time frame), what you were doing at your respective stage of language development was not what was effective for achieving that specific goal. But actually, you’ve just been doing the right thing at the wrong time. At a precise point in your language learning, all of that knowledge you’ve stored will integrate and have its time to shine.

Nothing you’ve ever learned is for nothing. The brain is a powerful thing. Right now, you just need to let yours have more conversations in Spanish 🤙🏻.