It also makes up for a lot of recent frustration I've been feeling. I had felt like my Japanese hadn't been progressing like it should have been despite all the work I'd been putting into it. Especially today, when some written Japanese I was trying to translate was just giving me fits. But I suppose learning a language is a pursuit filled with plateaus -- full of punctuated equilibria, as it were. I should have remembered that, as I've been through this before, both with Japanese and with other languages I've studied (namely Latin and German).
So, I'm happy. 頑張るつもりです(ganbaru tsumori desu)! As if there was any doubt.