Hi everyone. Just wanted give the perspective of someone who left Skritter for a while--and like an old lover, is coming back.

I've been gone 4 months. It's been busy: I was putting an album out, planning a wedding, and studying for my dissertation. Fun, but too much to do at once. I had no time for myself and was slowly going crazy. So I made a tough decision, and stopped studying Chinese.

Just recently, my fiancee and I decided to move to China after our wedding. I haven't been practicing at all; this was sudden incentive to get my Chinese in shape. After a long day of work last week, I went online and loaded up the old skritter.com

The first thing I noticed was I had 4,000 items to review. Ouch. I spent maybe 15 minutes, realized I had forgotten everything, and gave up. The next day I returned and tried the same thing. 15 minutes, mounting frustration, crippling defeat.

I found a solution. Yesterday, like jww1066, I nuked everything and started over. Yes, everything. It was therapeutic. I practiced today and had a great time. It was a blast writing characters (like 我 and 照片) I haven't seen in forever. Chinese is fun again.

I should say something about the site. For most of you change has been incremental; for me I saw everything at once. I noticed all sorts of changes--some functional, some invisible, some cosmetic. All in all, the site looks and feels really good. Props to the Skritter team for their hard work.

I'll be more disciplined with my practice habits from here on out. Last year I had some 7 lists on the go, plus 300 items in the queue. It was a scattershot approach to learning--see a character I didn't know, instantly add it. My life is too busy to sustain this style of learning now. I'm still gonna practice every day, but I need to be wiser and take my time with it.

Anyway, I'm back for the indefinite future. Hi to everyone! I hope your Chinese has improved by leaps and bounds. For me, it's just good to be back.

--murrayjames

Welcome back! Good luck with the wedding planning. My advice is to get married as soon as possible so you don't have any time to agonize over decisions. ;)

Where can we find out more about your album?

As far as the scattershot approach, I don't think it's fundamentally a wrong idea to add random bits and pieces to your queue, as long as you're 100% sure that the things you're studying are actually going to be useful. For example, I studied the character 于 here, but my Chinese tutor told me today that this is an old-fashioned character that isn't used so much anymore.

Something I do think is quite useful is adding items to the queue that Chinese people have actually said or written to you. That gives you an additional memory hook for the item, as you can also remember the person and the social context.

James

Thanks James!

Your advice about the scattershot approach is good. Before, I would add anything I didn't know. Your approach makes a lot more sense.

The wedding is June in Chengdu. I can't wait. I take it from your advice that you've been married before?

The album is called Happy Every Day (after 天天快乐, which I borrowed from John Pasden). I recorded it a year ago. It releases next month--if it's cool with the Skritter team, I'll make an announcement when it comes out.

I wonder if there could be a way of deleting everything that either you don't know (i.e. never learned) or forgot? I added many characters just ahead of my exams as I was slightly behind with writing practice and it would have been nice to remove them all and just focus on maintaining current knowledge.

@murrayjames: I got married a little over a year ago. We had about two months to plan the wedding and it went amazingly well because we couldn't dither over minor details, and in the end almost everything turns out to be minor except location, date, and guest list.

I'll keep an eye out for your album. You're the Murray James on MySpace, right?

James

I agree, we were thinking of doing 15 months of planning and then decided to go to 3 months of planning and the result was great. Unless you love the planning and want super-control over details the quick lead time is great.

@james: That's not me but I know him, he's a singer-songwriter from the UK. I'm the jazz musician from New York, this Murray James:

http://www.murrayjames.net

The wedding is in June, thankfully. No two-year engagement for us, I don't think my mother-in-law would stand for it!

Welcome back, and congratulations! You're welcome to post share your album when it drops, sure.

I think an alternative to "save me" where everything that isn't known well is deleted or pushed off in favor of consolidating stuff that isn't super overdue will be a good thing to do for these, as suggested in the other thread on this.