I am going in the direction of my dreams.

Nobody catches themselves getting better at a language. There is no afternoon when it happens. Then a joke on the radio lands before you have translated it, and eight months become visible all at once.

Direction works like that — measurable backwards, close to invisible forwards. It is why people give up in the flat middle of things that were working perfectly well. Look at what you can do now that you could not do in March. That is the honest instrument, and it is the only one calibrated properly.