Hi everyone! :) I'm a new Japanese learner who is neurodivergent (Autism, ADHD), and has some memory issues due to past brain procedures.

I've been learning for a bit over 2 weeks now so I'm very much a beginner. And my progress so far has been...slow. I have thus far been focusing on learning the kana. As of now, I have memorized all hiragana and know all the "extras" as I call them (like dakuten, blended letters, long consonants and vowels, etc). I can write them comfortably as well. My main resource is Busuu (not perfect, but I am quite enjoying it!) so I've learned some very basic vocab as well.

However, I have seen many people say that learning hiragana and katakana can be done in a few hours' time, which is amazing to me and makes me feel like my progress is incredibly slow.

I anticipate that katakana will take the same amount of time, if not longer, to learn than hiragana - so I'm looking at about a month total to learn both of them.

I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to just dive right in to learning kanji, reading, and vocabulary. But I really wanted to do this right and master the basics first. I guess I'm just feeling a bit discouraged because, with my memory issues, it feels like it will take me a long time to see any meaningful progress.

How long did it take you guys to learn hiragana and katakana? Anyone else out there dealing with learning Japanese while having memory issues and/or being neurodivergent?

How do you maintain motivation when it feels like your progress speed is not where you would like it to be?