Ok, some thoughts…
I’m experiencing the same feeling as when my favorite NFL team (The NY Giants) won the Super Bowl in 2008. They were not the most dominant team, they definitely weren’t favored to win, they defied all expectations and went on a winning streak that delivered a championship.
For literally several hours afterwards today, I found myself laughing out loud going “holy ****, I did it. I can’t believe I actually did it.” I said the same thing after the Giants won. My face hurts from smiling so hard, hahaha
Earlier this year, I turned 40 years old. Some guys hit that age and have mid-life crisis’ and buy sports cars or make questionable romantic decisions… I guess my reaction was to give myself a seemingly insurmountable challenge and dig into it. (This also should encourage all of you in your late 20’s or early 30’s or older who question if you’re “too old” to start doing this stuff. If I can do it, you for sure can.)
It’s so wild to look back at this post and realize that I actually did it:
So yeah, this is seriously one of my proudest achievements.
I want to take a quick second and spotlight one other really cool accomplishment that allowed me to get to this point:
I have not missed a single day of recognition practice since I created the first cards in my Anki Shadow System deck. I went 347 for 347. I maintained this consistency through two bouts of covid, the passing of a close family member, the release of the new Zelda game, and a two week trip to Disney World with my kids. I developed a habit of carving out 20 or so minutes every day and making sure I ran my pairs, no matter what else was going on. (Now, if I can just apply that same commitment to physical training and exercise, that would be awesome this coming year, lol!)
I spent nearly 160 hours reviewing pairs this year and building my speed. (STILL not as much time as I’ve put into playing Skyrim!) I absolutely credit this review time with the ability to nail this goal. WIthout shaving my recognition time down to around a second per pair, I wouldn’t have been able to generate the scenes quickly enough to make them memorable in under a minute.
Looking back on the process, I absolutely should have challenged myself sooner. If I was coaching someone to do this now, I’d tell them to push their speed as early as possible. Don’t worry about getting 100% at a specific speed and THEN moving on. Get close, then challenge yourself. @Aa123456, you were totally right with your advice to just go for it. Thank you for pushing me to try it.
I also recommend making a BUNCH of palaces and reviewing them and using them right from the start to practice variable image stacking from day one with whatever pairs you’re working on. If I had done this, I feel like I could have hit this goal many months sooner.
I was trying to get introspective about why I stalled with deck attempts for literally 4 months over the summer and fall. I think I was almost afraid of failing, so I procrastinated and didn’t try. I kept up with my recognition practice because that was a known entity. WIth deck attempts, there are tons of unknowns that seemed to psyche me out a bit. Would I hit a bunch of black-first pair in a row and totally botch my scene construction? Would I swap phonetics for J and Q or suit combos and visualize the wrong images? Would I get to the end and completely space on the beginning loci scenes? All of these things went though my head and I think I let them win for a while.
Then at some point I was like… who cares? Who cares if I fail at first? This is literally all taking place in my head. Nobody will know, the only critic will be myself. So I changed my mindset and realized that nothing will improve without practice and effort and with that comes failure, but with failure hopefully comes growth. Once I decided that I didn’t care if I failed, I made massive progress.
SO. All of that to say… If this 40 year old sound engineer can learn a monster system like this and accomplish this goal, you all can realize yours too.
Thanks @BradenExplosion for inspiring me to learn this craziness. I saw your youtube videos of your rediculous 15 second attempts and heard you explaining a little bit about what was going on in your mind as you were doing them and I was like, “I must understand how this is possible.”
Thanks @LociInTheSky for your ingenious invention of the Shadow System. (I’d still love to learn about your new system if you ever get around to writing it out!) 
And, finally, again, thanks all of you in this amazing community for welcoming me, challenging me, and encouraging me all along the way. This site has become pretty much my favorite place on the internet.
Let’s see what the future has in store!
Onward!