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Five years.
A hell of a difference.
2021 2026
My English. My accent. Who I am when I speak.
And years of deep practice in between.
Press play 01 : 42
Nine months apart
(2026)
Two recordings, nine months apart. The changes are real, but they're quiet — and quiet is the part most people give up on. It's still happening.
"Your inner state commands your presence in English and your speech"
What I notice when I listen back
In January, I hear myself hurry. The words come out, but my nervous system is louder than my message.
In October, I sound sick — but more myself. The rushing is gone. More breath, more pauses, more of me.
Nine months. The change is small enough that most people wouldn't catch it. But it's there. And it's the kind of progress you only keep making if you stop expecting applause for it.
Press play on either of them. The other will pause so you can compare them cleanly.
“Apparently, I had nothing left to improve.”
These aren't rehearsed performances. The video from 2019 and the podcast from 2021 are both spontaneous. No script. I'm thinking as I speak.
I'd already been practicing for years. I had ideas worth hearing and I could express them in English.
The funniest part? People told me how good I sounded.
“Your English is so good. Your accent is so good. You have nothing left to improve.”
I listened to them. Then I kept practicing. Listening now, I hear things I couldn't hear then.
My accent was much stronger. My vowels were inconsistent. My sounds sat mostly toward the front of my mouth. My pitch was often higher than it is today.
And I rushed. God, I rushed! I was in a hurry to get the idea out. My melody often followed my first language, rather than the patterns an English-speaking listener would expect.
The ideas were there. But the way I delivered them didn't always help people follow them.
I was speaking spontaneously. That didn't mean I'd finished learning how to speak.
Listen for yourself.
Video 2019
Podcast audio 2021
And then ask yourself the question I keep coming back to: What if I'd stopped in 2021 because everyone said I was good? Which parts of my voice and myself would I never have discovered?