I’m not sure that I’d call vanilla GNOME (or any modern DE) unusable for me, but Tiling Assistant is really great. I’m looking forward to GNOME’s upcoming tiling changes so I no longer have to rely on an extension to give me quarter tiling.
Dash to Dock is also nice, though I don’t necessarily mind having to hit Super to see my dock.
I’m waiting for the conclusions to things that are completely out of my control, but that will also have a heavy bearing on my future happiness. I won’t know how these things will turn out for months, but that certainly isn’t stopping them from impacting my ability to enjoy life today.
I had actually considered doing Chinese as my required world language for college. My trade school mentor, who was very well traveled, talked me out of it after telling me how insanely difficult Chinese can be to learn. I’m glad that you’re feeling productive with Japanese.