Having guilt abandoning/putting aside a language I studied for so long

The peculiar weight of linguistic guilt has a way of settling in your bones like a half-remembered dream, especially when you've invested years collecting vocabulary like seashells along an ocean of good intentions. Should I give up and learn a different language instead? asks the question that's been quietly screaming in the back of every language learner's mind since the dawn of verb conjugations, while I love my TL but.... whispers the uncomfortable truth that passion, like a cat, rarely obeys the rules we set for it. The original poster's quandary isn't really about Japanese versus Korean versus Mandarin at all—it's about the peculiar American anxiety that every choice must be definitive, every path linear, every abandoned hobby a personal failing rather than what it actually is: evidence of a curious mind moving through phases like a river finding its course.

Consider the etymology of "abandon" itself—those Old French roots (a- "to" + bandon "control") suggest something far more fluid than our modern usage implies. You're not abandoning Japanese so much as releasing it from your immediate grasp, like a skilled juggler who knows when to let one ball arc higher before catching it again. The guilt here is manufactured, a cultural artifact that insists we must master one thing completely before allowing ourselves permission to explore another, as if the human brain were a library with finite shelf space rather than the infinitely expandable neural network it actually is. Your parents' polyglot wisdom contains truth—focus works—but it doesn't account for the particular neurochemistry of ADHD, where novelty isn't a character flaw but a legitimate learning strategy.

That dopamine spark you're chasing isn't a bug in your system; it's a feature. Your brain is essentially a linguistic razor clam, burrowing sideways toward whatever stimulus promises the most neurochemical reward, and fighting that current is like trying to hold water in your fists. The question isn't whether you're being indecisive—it's whether indecision might actually be the most honest response to a world overflowing with beautiful, complex languages that all deserve your attention. Japanese isn't going anywhere, those books aren't mocking you from their shelves, and N4/N3 level proficiency represents hundreds of hours of genuine achievement that no sudden shift in focus can erase.

What happens when we stop treating language learning like a monogamous relationship and start viewing it as a polyamorous adventure? When the pressure to choose one true love dissolves into the joy of maintaining multiple meaningful connections, each feeding different parts of our intellectual hunger? The real tragedy wouldn't be switching from Japanese to Mandarin—it would be staying stuck in a guilt spiral that prevents you from following whatever linguistic thread currently makes your neurons light up like a festival. Watch what happens in the next five years as language learning apps and AI tutors make it increasingly possible to maintain casual relationships with multiple languages simultaneously, keeping them all warm like embers rather than forcing us to choose which fire deserves our fuel.