Hi everyone. Just wanted give the perspective of someone who left Skritter for a while--and like an old lover, is coming back.
I've been gone 4 months. It's been busy: I was putting an album out, planning a wedding, and studying for my dissertation. Fun, but too much to do at once. I had no time for myself and was slowly going crazy. So I made a tough decision, and stopped studying Chinese.
Just recently, my fiancee and I decided to move to China after our wedding. I haven't been practicing at all; this was sudden incentive to get my Chinese in shape. After a long day of work last week, I went online and loaded up the old skritter.com
The first thing I noticed was I had 4,000 items to review. Ouch. I spent maybe 15 minutes, realized I had forgotten everything, and gave up. The next day I returned and tried the same thing. 15 minutes, mounting frustration, crippling defeat.
I found a solution. Yesterday, like jww1066, I nuked everything and started over. Yes, everything. It was therapeutic. I practiced today and had a great time. It was a blast writing characters (like 我 and 照片) I haven't seen in forever. Chinese is fun again.
I should say something about the site. For most of you change has been incremental; for me I saw everything at once. I noticed all sorts of changes--some functional, some invisible, some cosmetic. All in all, the site looks and feels really good. Props to the Skritter team for their hard work.
I'll be more disciplined with my practice habits from here on out. Last year I had some 7 lists on the go, plus 300 items in the queue. It was a scattershot approach to learning--see a character I didn't know, instantly add it. My life is too busy to sustain this style of learning now. I'm still gonna practice every day, but I need to be wiser and take my time with it.
Anyway, I'm back for the indefinite future. Hi to everyone! I hope your Chinese has improved by leaps and bounds. For me, it's just good to be back.
--murrayjames