Like a lot of others here, I began my CI journey with Spanish (namely Dreaming Spanish) - this was back in late 2021 I believe. I didn’t have that huge of an interest in language learning in general at the time, but my girlfriend of years grew up in Honduras and I figured it’d be an amazing way to connect with her on a deeper level to begin learning on my own! No huge end goal in mind, just getting to a point where I could understand it, and maybe have a conversation one day.
I picked up some books with tips on the language, short story books for beginners, books with exercises, etc. - but wow, this was rough lol, not fun at all. Language-learning apps were mostly a waste of time as well.
Discovered CI and Dreaming Spanish somehow, and something about it was just so addicting. Learning more about how it worked as I kind of went along, SEEING IT WITH MY OWN TWO EYES (ears?) that it worked as I soaked in new words without thinking too much consciously about it, could apply them in real life, intuitively picking up sentence structures and knowing if something “felt” right or wrong if I was thinking or trying to say something.
I took 3 years of Spanish in high school and I learned more Spanish in like 30 days with consistent CI than I ever did through traditional study. Truly a revelation for me.
That being said, I continued on through the different levels (no grammar study or anything) and eventually got to the point where I would just watch stuff on YouTube for natives that I was into, racking up hours that way. Watching movies in Spanish here and there - getting hooked on Survivor Mexico and watching it religiously with my gf, as well as other ridiculous reality shows. Wasn’t even about learning anymore, it was just another part of me, if that makes sense.
I don’t speak all that often to be honest (again, never a big end goal for me), but when I do, I always get compliments on my accent and it’s never that difficult to get an idea across. Took a trip to Spain, could order food with no issues, talk to people no problem, and appreciated the trip that much more deeply.
My girlfriend’s parents speak Spanish or Spanglish most of the time, and I never ever feel left out of conversations. I can eavesdrop on conversations in public places lol, I can codeswitch if I ever need to communicate something more privately in public. It’s been really fun and funny and one of the most rewarding things I ever decided to do in my adult life - and I look forward to doing it all again with Japanese, and seeing what adventures it’ll take me on!
It’ll be way harder and take way more time, I imagine, but who cares. I look forward to taking on the written language once I’ve built up enough listening comprehension, should be interesting 
I have a trip to Japan planned for mid-October this year, so hopefully I can fit in as many hours as I can by then to get that much more out of it as well.
With CI as a basis (started with CIJ 2 weeks ago, and we’re already at 20+ hours, let’s go!!), I know I can’t go wrong. The only issue with CI is that more people don’t know about it. We’ll get there though 