I was losing my way and confidence until a chance haircut yesterday with a Spanish hairdresser (just hit 1,000 hours over 2.5 years). A story of someone learning it slower/long game and realising the roadmap is never exact.
Hi all. I know what you're thinking: yet another progress report from an anonymous reddit user. I did want to share this though because I had an experience yesterday that gave me much needed confidence as I feel I have been plateauing hard and was on the point of stopping for a while.
A quick summary of my background: basic school Spanish (colours, numbers etc) for 2 years about 20 years ago, and then started from scratch again in January 2024 with language transfer and Dreaming Spanish. My partner is from a country in Central America and had the pleasure of meeting their family summer 2024 - I could speak then but incredibly slowly but was told it was bastante though I think they were just being kind. That's my main motivation for learning Spanish and eventually we want to end up moving to a Spanish speaking country.
I was very consistent in 2024 and 2025, but 2026 has been busy with other aspects of life so dropped from 2 hours a day to around 30 minutes to an hour. Finally at the 1,000 hour mark. I was feeling very stuck; 600 - 1000 hours I just felt I wasn't making progress at all. I have lot of difficulty of when it's le or lo and haber in all its forms (haya, huberia, habia) still makes me come to a grinding halt. I also have a very bad habit of comparing my progress to others; I lurk on here a lot and see people speaking amazingly at 600 hours and it was only the other week I finally clocked how to use tenia/iba etc.
Anyways, I've been on vacation in Switzerland to visit a friend and was in desperate need of a haircut. I found a place my friend had used and found out the hairdresser is from Colombia. My French is non-existent and they weren't confident with their English so I knew this was a rare chance I had to take the plunge and try to speak in Spanish. I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that when you don't have a choice, you push yourself out of your comfort zone to give it a go.
To my surprise I was able to communicate how I wanted my haircut, told him that the guy had cut my friend's hair a few days ago and I was able to understand all of his questions and engage in quite a few different topics (weather, different cultures and customs of people from different countries, differences between Switzerland and where I live etc) and found it flowed quite well! It wasn't perfect by any means (I tend to overthink my next sentence sometimes then it ends up being staccato/fragmented/mix of tense/conjugation), but I think the biggest confidence boost came when another Spanish speaker came in. He must be a regular customer as the hairdresser greeted him and was quick to tell him I spoke Spanish and what was great is that I understood them talking to each other. I really lack confidence but he said in Spanish I understand you fine and we've been chatting for 15 minutes!
I definitely don't think I'm what the roadmap says at level 6, but I do feel I'm more or less mid level 5. I just wanted to share as there's a lot of users here (and no disrespect or taking away from their progress) that sink tons of hours in with amazing progress and I've felt so disheartened. Purpose of my story is that it's okay to play the long, slow game I guess? And that it really comes down to a matter of self-confidence that I desperately need to work on.