おはようございます！僕はディランです。ディーもオッケーです！
My name is Dylan and I’ve been learning Japanese for (technically) over a year now! I did take a few months break in the middle of that so I would only say I’ve been actively learning for about 9 months and only started proper input practice (without any English subtitles or translations) 2 months ago. I have found myself able to follow the intermediate videos here fairly well the past couple weeks which is very exciting and motivating!
My interests in the Japanese language started when I was quite young actually, but I never knew where to start (and also couldn’t really afford to do much even if I did.) I found Tofugu a year ago and finally had some direction, so I started right away! I was able to learn hiragana and katakana in about 3 days and in a week I had (shaky) confidence in being able to recognize everything. There was a bit of confusion on what to do next and I was under the impression that I should be learning kanji for a bit before trying to read or listen, so I got through the free levels of WaniKani (which felt good!) but continued only SRS drills which eventually lead to my months long burnout 
I was watching a lot of Japanese content still, though it was far beyond my listening capabilities and was also all subtitled. Then I came across the Comprehensible Input theory and more importantly found CI’s YouTube channel shortly after. Being able to understand the super beginner stuff was so exciting and motivating; and for the first time since I started, acquiring this language felt extremely acheivable! Recognizing that you’re understanding more and more is very addicting, I can see why people decide to learn multiple languages just for fun now lol.
My current ongoing short term goal is simply to increase my reading speed and comprehension. My main baseline goal is to be able to understand what I’m reading/hearing with ease, and to be able to effectively communicate in Japanese with whoever I happen to meet. My ultimate long term goal is to move to Japan; somewhere in Hokkaido would be really nice, Lake Shikotsu’s Ice Festival looks beautiful! I would also want to continuously work towards making myself sound as natural as possible. I became interested in the philosophies of language learning and especially thought about why people choose to continue refining beyond fluency. For me my interest would be because it’s very important to me to express my feelings and thoughts as clearly as possible. I know perfect grammar and intonation aren’t completely necessary as ultimately you’d be understood a vast majority of the time anyways, but I also know that mistakes can be distracting for listeners and can make you harder to understand. So if the only job of the listener is simply to understand the message, I want to make it as easy as reasonably possible for them in Japanese as I do in English.
Very long winded introduction, this will be the script for my Ted Talk in 20 years haha! I’m real happy and excited to be here and join people in the community in working towards our goals together!
What’s its name? My brother has a cat just like that named Ninja 
CIJを使ってくださってありがとうございます！よろしくお願いします。