Ok, so yesterday, I didn't share where I was in my progress with these four languages specifically.
Spanish: I am on the regular -er verb drills (so right at the beginning) of my verb drill book. I have an overall grammar one too I translated a paragraph and practiced -ar verbs yesterday.
Norwegian: I translated the same paragraph for Spanish into Norwegian...and wow! was it hard!! I realized how much of a gap I have between my Norwegian and Spanish because I thought the paragraph was way too easy in Spanish.
Russian: Did nothing yesterday, but I worked on handwriting the day before with a colleague from the Ukraine. I almost have the majority of the alphabet down. I had just started this language. I am still on circle one in checkpoint one in Duolingo.
French: Oh my French woes..
Very unmotivated... I do have the same grammar book as for Spanish for French but I think I also need some sort of textbook as well that has spoken dialogues so I can hear those liaisons. They are the death of me. My progress is five circles in the first checkpoint, but most I have to catch back up on. Only one is still gold. I try to just catch what I can from employees.
One of my major learning issues is getting opportunities to truly practice these langauges (even French) in real time. In French even, the conversation never progresses past "How are you?",even with the guy who speaks Spanish natively that I work with. I have a bit of social anxiety on top of that, so on the Internet usually the conversations are basic and never go deep, even in German, which I actually can talk very deeply in. My mind freezes up and I can't think of what to say. This sort of unmotivates me. I hope I stick with the learning despite these challenges.
My other learning issue is that I always seem to get to this point, where I either find the language pointless, or my life has suddenly a big change, new job, for example. I think the pointless part might apply to Norwegian being that their English will always remain better than my Norwegian, so if I were to use the language in real time, it would be just for kicks. French might be given up if I leave my night job, which I am seriously thinking about doing in about 6 months. If I get a new teaching job, I may give up everything, but Spanish.
I am writing these roadblocks here so that maybe I can focus on trying not to let them get in the way.
For me at least, there is this thing called "The point of no return," when I am learning languages. If I quit and don*t practice for about 2 to 3 months, I usually never practice it again for several years, but just wish I could get back into it. My goal is to never get to this "point of no return."