Buondì.
I have a bandwidth issue.
It’s nothing to do with groups of people playing music, nor their expanding waistlines (though I have one of those.)
It’s more of a metaphor, actually, (read about real bandwidth issues here) my brain as an increasingly slow and unreliable internet connection.
You’ll know that feeling when you try to load a webpage or operate an app and it’s slow and/or doesn’t work as expected?
That.
And the frustration it engenders? Even bad-temper, for those of us prone to such reactions?
I put my increasingly frequent bandwidth issues down to the lack of an uninterrupted night’s sleep for what seems like forever but is actually only the last couple of months (thanks Bug!)
The symptoms are clear enough. Stuff that would normally take just a click, requires multiple, frantic finger stabs, and even then may not happen. Especially then.
There’s an overwhelming feeling of ‘if just one more thing goes wrong…’
Yesterday, I was trying to do one of my kids’ tax returns. They’d received a letter earlier in the year (from the British tax authorities) to say that they would no longer send out a paper form as said child would henceforth be expected to complete the return online, deadline 31st January 2024.
So I figured I had plenty of time, but started good and early anyway, just to be on the safe side.
Turns out that the letter was wrong, that my child cannot complete a return online because they live in Italy not Britain, that the deadline for the submission of the paper form was three weeks ago, and that a £100 pound fine had therefore already been incurred.
Which ruined the rest of my day.
Not to mention the additional time wasted trying to print a blank form, finding out after I’d done so and half-completed it that that was wrong, locating a webpage with the correct telephone number through which I could request that a form with child’s details printed on it be sent, listening to multiple messages thanking me for my call and insisting that paper forms would not be sent because returns must now be done online, and finally talking to a pleasant woman who agreed to send my child the relevant form, though warned it might take weeks to reach us by post.
Actually and mysteriously, it’s usually multiple months for a letter from HMRC to get from the UK to Italy. I blame remoaner saboteurs!
So what should I do, I asked? They already missed one deadline thanks to the misleading letter. I’d rather they didn’t miss another!
There was a silence, which sounded rather like an embarassed shrug.
For the rest of the day I COULD NOT COPE WITH ONE MORE THING, so left the computer off. If no one replied to your customer service email, thank HMRC.
But this bandwidth issue thing does rather put me in mind of a common language-learning problem, which is that exact same feeling of being overwhelmed, so not felling able to face even one more hoop, hurdle or humiliation.
Enough!!
I have an online Swedish conversation at lunchtime, and what with all the other things on my list (and I literally have dozens of multi-page lists), even if I usually enjoy it, it can sometimes feel like just. one. more. thing. I. could. really. do. without!
The temptation to quit is ever-present, after all WHY AM I DOING THIS??? What’s the point? I’m stuck in Italy with no possibility of parole. What do I need to speak Swedish for? And then I’ll die anyway, so it will all have been a waste of time…
But there’s also a solution, one which works well during bandwidth crises.
What you do is this: start with the easy, little things, that don’t require much time or mental energy.
Like washing the dishes, sterilizing baby bottles and filling them with formula, deleting website spam, and so on.
Take the smallest possible steps, just to get a little momentum in your day, just to move you on from being stuck in a mental morass. Decide that you’ll worry about tax returns and conversations with native speakers later.
If you’re bogged down with your Italian, or quit already and can’t face starting with it again, identify ONE, SMALL STEP and begin with that.
I find EasyItalianNews.com works well for me, not as a linguistic challenge, as my Italian is good (though not perfect by any means), but as one small thing I can cross off, and so feel good about. Almeno!
Read/listen to it all the way through WITHOUT STOPPING.
Then, if you have the bandwidth, do it again.
Or not. It’s entirely up to you.
Then cross the ‘do something to start with Italian again’ note off your list, and get on with the rest of your day.
No, you don’t have to look up every word (in fact, don’t look up any word!)
Nor is despair and self-flagellation required, or at all helpful.
It really doesn’t matter that you did or didn’t understand, or how much, or how you wish you had more time and mental energy to do it ‘properly’.
That’s just mental noise. It matters that you did it, e basta.
And that it was painless enough that you’ll do the next bulletin when it arrives. And the one after that.
Until it becomes a habit.
Until one day it will seem easy and familiar.
And so will result in learning.
Now then Daniel! Tax returns are off the list for today, as are the million other stressful things you ‘should’ do.
Let it all wait – the fine was already incurred, anyway.
Go wash the dishes, sterilize the biberon and fill them with formula, while listening to the news in Swedish. Routine stuff.
Then maybe have a shower, boil some coffee and – perhaps by mid-morning, and with enough arabica in you – bandwidth will be restored!
A venerdì.
P.S. 
I found a moment yesterday to read/listen to Tuesday’s FREE bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news.
I usually try to do it the same day, or within a day or two. But I always read/listen.
What about you?
Subscribing is FREE, too. And subscribing gets you the bulletins via email, three times a week – on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, so you don’t have to regularly check the website. All you have to do is read/listen. Then on to the next easy, quick job!
N.b. EasyItalianNews.com is funded by donations. Every couple of months they appeal to readers for help, which is what I’m doing right now.
If EasyItalianNews.com has benefitted your Italian, donate here. No amount is too small (or too large, for that matter…)
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