Welcome to the Listening Time podcast. Hey everybody, this is Conner, and you’re listening to Episode 44 of the Listening Time podcast.

I hope you all had a good Christmas. Actually, at the time of recording this, it’s not Christmas yet. I’m recording this the week of Christmas, but this episode will be released after Christmas. So, I hope you all had a good Christmas and that you’re having a good end of the year and that you’re thinking of all the plans and things that you want to do in 2022.

So, since this is the last podcast episode before the end of the year, I wanted to dedicate this episode to talking a little bit about my year, about my 2021. So, I can kind of give all of you guys a review of what I did in 2021… the things that I did well, or the things that I didn’t do well… to just reflect on this year. When we use the verb “reflect” like this in English, it means that we’re thinking deeply about something, and we’re trying to analyze it. We’re reflecting on something.

But before we get to today’s topic, let me mention some news. So on the Patreon Listening Time website, we have a new tier. Remember that the word “tier” just means level. So, we now have a four dollars level and the title of this tier is Family Members. So now, if you donate two dollars per month, you’re a Member. If you donate three dollars per month, you’re a Super Member, and if you donate four dollars per month, you’re a Family Member. So, Listening Time Family Members have four things that they receive each month. So of course, they get the new Listening Practice Seminar on the first day of each month. You’ll also get one of our old listening or pronunciation seminars on the 10th day of each month. And then of course, you get the extra bonus podcast episode on the 15th day of each month. And one new thing is that you’ll also receive one of my Sound Training videos on the 25th day of each month.

So, I just recently had the idea of creating these Sound Training videos, in which I focus on one particular sound or one pattern in English, and I help you understand that sound or that pattern better when you’re listening. So, I’ve already posted the first Sound Training video for Listening Time Family Members, and I also posted this one on YouTube as well so that all of you can check it out and watch it and see if you like this type of training. And if you like it, then you can sign up to become a Listening Time Family Member.

So, you’ll receive these training videos every month, and of course, you’ll also receive all of those other rewards that I mentioned. And if you’re already a member, if you’re a listening time Member or Super Member, you can also upgrade your membership to Listening Time Family Member if you want access to these Sound Training videos. So, you can change your membership from Super Member to Family Member, or from Member to Family Member if you’d like. These Sound Training videos are short. They’ll probably be a few minutes long each time, but it will give you… in each video, I’ll give you a lot of examples using this same sound or this same pattern so that you can train your listening and you can start to notice this sound when you do your own listening. So, in the first Sound Training video, I focused on questions starting with “what”. For example, instead of saying “what did you do yesterday?” native speakers say “”. We don’t say “”.

So, if you’re interested in that, I’ll leave the link to this first Sound Training video in the Episode Notes. So, you can click on that and check it out, and if you like it, then consider becoming a Listening Time Family Member for just four dollars per month. But of course, if you want you can also just become a normal Member for two dollars per month to receive an extra episode and a new Listening Practice Seminar every month or a Listening Time Super Member to receive a new seminar, an older seminar, and an episode every month. Okay, thank you for allowing me to promote my membership a little bit. I know that a lot of you are just here for the free content. That’s okay. But of course, I need to try to sell a little bit, and I really think that these things will be really useful for you. So, that’s why I’m mentioning them. And before we get started, just remember that you have access to the transcript for this episode. That will also be in the Episode Notes. And I think that’s it. Okay, let’s get started.

Okay, so let’s talk about my 2021. So first, I’ll talk about my professional life. So, I had a lot of changes in this area. Because first of all, as many of you have probably noticed, I’m no longer using the website polyglossa.com. This was the website that I was using at the beginning of the year. And when I first created this idea of Polyglossa, I had a completely different vision in mind. In this case, when I say the word “vision”, I’m saying I had a different idea for the future. Your vision is your idea of the future. So, I had a completely different vision when I created the brand Polyglossa. I thought that I wanted to create some type of school for multiple languages, not just English. But as I started creating content for my website, and as I began to see what type of content students really liked watching, I realized that the content that my audience liked the most was my Listening Practice Videos on YouTube.

So, I continued making these types of videos. And I also had the idea of making a podcast, right: the Listening Time podcast, because as I’ve mentioned before, I also use these styles of podcasts when I study other languages, like French, for example. So, I know that this method works when trying to improve your listening. So, I also wanted to create a podcast and I decided to call it Listening Time. But for a while, I continued with the website polyglossa.com where I sold my seminars, and then the Listening Time podcast was like a separate project. But my podcast has become more popular than any of my other content, and so I’ve decided to focus mostly on… not the podcast, specifically, but on this style of content… so, on content related to listening, and not as much grammar content or pronunciation content.

I still like pronunciation, and it’s very similar to listening, so there’s a lot of crossover. In this case, when I use the word “crossover”, I’m saying that there are a lot of similar characteristics between English pronunciation and English listening. There’s a lot of crossover, but I’m focused primarily on helping people improve their listening. So, I changed my idea completely, and I no longer use Polyglossa and that website. By the way, the phrase “no longer” just means that I don’t do it anymore. So, I no longer use it. I don’t use it anymore. So, I no longer use that website.

And now, of course, I have my Patreon page: www.patreon.com/listeningtime and I think this is a much better model of business because in this way, you don’t only have access to my seminars for 24 hours and then they disappear. I had that model before, but I like this model better. You become a member and then you have access to all the content that I make available for that tier, or that level of membership. And so, you have much more content and you can access it whenever you want. It doesn’t disappear. So, I think that’s better for you. And it’s also better for me, because I think it will help me sustain my business better. In this case, the word “sustain” means to maintain support, keep something going, okay? So, this type of model helps me sustain my business more because it’s a membership and not only a one dollar purchase that someone makes one time for example. Obviously, people can cancel their memberships whenever they want, but I hope that you find this content useful and you’ll want to continue your membership into the future. So, I made this big change professionally, and I think it’s going to be a good change for me.

I also changed my Instagram name recently. I changed the name of my YouTube channel. Everything is now “Listening Time”. So, I mentioned Instagram. This is one thing that I need to do a better job with. I haven’t used my Instagram account in, like, four or five months. And so, I’m going to start making more videos and more content for Instagram that will be more listening-related. So, I’m excited to become more active on Instagram as well. And of course, I still have my YouTube channel. So, these are all things that will help me grow my business, I hope.

So, my vision for the future is that I want to be the best resource in the world for English listening content and English listening improvement. I want to be the number one source on the internet for listening-related content. And I hope that I can achieve this because I think that this is a really important area of English that a lot of people struggle with, right? They find a lot of grammar and vocabulary content on YouTube or on the internet in general, but not many English teachers help students with the sounds of English, with pronunciation or with listening, and I think that there is a need for this, and I want to fill this gap. In English, when we say we want to “fill a gap”, we’re saying that there is something missing, and we want to to fill that missing spot. We want to fill this gap. So, that’s what I plan on doing. And hopefully, I’m doing a good job so far. I hope you’re all enjoying this content.

Of course, as I mentioned in my last episode, I’ve had a difficult situation, financially, recently. And that’s why I can’t produce as much free material because I don’t have the time to do so. I need to focus on the material that actually generates money, and, of course, my classes, which is where I earn my normal salary. So, I haven’t had an easy situation, financially, this year. But I think that in the future, I’ll be able to produce more content for free once my my financial situation is a little bit better. And hopefully, with the Patreon membership page, I’ll be able to generate more income for myself. “Income” just refers to salary, right, the money that you earn. So, I hope that the Patreon memberships will generate more income for me so that I’ll be in a better position in the future to feel more comfortable financially and be able to produce more free content as well.

So, now talking about my personal life… so in my personal life, two really big things happened this year. One of them is that I moved to a new city. I think you all know that by now. I talked a lot about that. So, I’m living in a different city now, and so there are a lot of things that are challenging for me… alot of things that I need to adapt to and get used to. And this has not been an easy transition for me. This has been a very difficult process, but that’s life. In English, we can use the phrase “that’s life” to say that life is hard and you just need to accept it. So, that’s life. There are a lot of hard transitions in life. And so, it’s okay, I just need to give it more time and hopefully I’ll feel more comfortable later on.

But the other big thing that happened in my personal life is that I had my first child. I don’t think I’ve announced that yet on this podcast. I announced it in one of my bonus episodes, so the Listening Time Members already heard that. But for the general public, this is the first time that you guys are hearing this from me. I think you’ve probably heard my baby crying in the background in some episodes. I apologize for that. I can’t really do anything about that. That’s probably a sound that you’re going to hear more of in the future. But yeah, I had my first child: a baby boy. And it has completely changed my life, of course, in a good way. Obviously, there are many sacrifices that I need to make now, and I need to work a lot harder, and I need to do many things that I didn’t need to do in the past. And I’m always tired now.

But all of that pales in comparison to the joy that I feel of being a father. In English, when we use the phrase “pale in comparison”, this just means that something is not even comparable to something else, that it’s so small or insignificant or minor when compared to another thing. So, the inconveniences and the sacrifices and the hard work… all of that pales in comparison to the joy of being a parent. It really does. I’m not lying. I know that a lot of people like to talk about all of the difficulties and complications that come with being a parent, especially when you have your first baby.

But I like to focus more on the positive things because, in my opinion, the positives greatly outweigh the negatives. The word “outweigh” in this sentence… it means that the positives are more significant than the negatives. They outweigh the negatives. So, I like to focus on the positives because I really do feel a lot of joy now that I’m a father, and life is very interesting now, now that I have a baby boy. So, that has been a huge change in my life, and that of course was the best thing about this year. And I can’t wait to see my son get older and develop and start to walk and talk and all of that in the future. Right now, he’s still very young, so he doesn’t do those things. But I’m excited to see his development in the future.

And one last category of things I wanted to mention is my activities and hobbies and things like that, that I did in 2021. So, one area that I really want to improve in next year is doing more exercise. So, in the second half of this year, because my son was born, I really haven’t done much exercise at all. I haven’t done a lot of outdoor activities. I haven’t done these things that I normally like doing. I normally like spending a lot of time outside, doing activities outdoors, going to parks, you know, things like that. And so, next year, I hope that I can spend more time outside and, in particular, doing more exercise, because I feel like I’m out of shape now. The phrase “out of shape” means that you’re not physically healthy. It means that you’re not strong or fast and you haven’t been exercising. So, I feel like I’m out of shape because I haven’t been able to exercise… especially since my son was born.

And so, in 2022, I want to do more activities. For example, I want to start playing tennis again. When I was a kid, I played tennis and I liked it. I was actually pretty good at this sport. But I stopped playing for many years, and recently, I had the idea to start playing again. I said “why not?” I need an activity to do outside. I want to get some exercise, and so, why not take up tennis again? In English, the phrasal verb “take up” in this context, it means that you start a hobby or an activity or something either for the first time, or maybe you’re starting again after a long break like I’m doing with tennis. So, I’m excited about doing that, and maybe I’ll find some other activities that I can also do outside.

And lastly, one other important activity in my life is language learning. And this is also something that I didn’t do a lot of this year. Of course, I studied language this year, but I didn’t dedicate as much time as I would have liked to, and I wasn’t as organized about it. I didn’t have a really good structure to my language learning this year. And so next year, I want to be more organized and structured about it and really make more improvements than I did this year. So this year, I focused on French, but like I said, I didn’t really improve that much. I improved a little bit, and my listening is improving a lot in French, but I still have a long way to go. And so, next year I plan on really spending more time listening, listening, listening. And once I get to the level where I can understand conversations between native French speakers without much difficulty, then I’ll start speaking and having more conversations in French.

And at that point, hopefully, I’ll be able to return to my Greek study. Because in the year 2020, I focused more on Greek, and it’s a language that I really love. It’s really fascinating for me. It’s definitely the hardest language that I’ve learned. And I took a break from Greek this year. And hopefully, in the second half of 2022, I can revisit Greek, and I’ll start to do a lot of listening practice with that language and hopefully, I’ll improve my comprehension to a level where I can understand Greek speakers speaking to each other, and then maybe in the following year, I’ll try to improve my Greek speaking as well. So, those are my language learning goals for the future. But this year wasn’t the best year for me in terms of language learning. So, I hope to improve that in the next year.

Okay, well, I think that we’ll stop there for today. Remember that you have the transcript for this episode available in the Episode Notes. So, just click there if you need it. And of course, remember to become a member at www.patreon.com/listeningtime You can either become a two dollars Member, a three dollars Super Member or a four dollars Family Member, depending on what content you want, and what type of material you’re looking for, but it’s all related to listening. But of course, the higher tiers have more content available. Thank you to all of you who have become members. I really appreciate that. And remember that you also have access to my first Sound Training video. If you click on that link in the Episode Notes, you’ll see that. And if you like that, then you should consider becoming a Listening Time Family Member for just four dollars per month. Alright, well, I hope you all have a good end of the year and a good start to the year 2022. I’ll talk to you again on the next episode of Listening Time.