I am enjoying reading your blog and I hope to pass some wisdom on learning a language.  What worked for me learning English was (in that order):
1.  Translating texts with a help of a dictionary.  In the initial period I translated about 10-15 pages from 3-4 books.
2.  Listening intently to the news many times a day.   I was lucky that we had Euronews at the time because the news were very repetitive.  Initially they seemed to speak 2x faster than I could hear :)
3.  Writting an email to English speaking people every day.  This was the crucial exersise.  Having to explain yourself in writing is even better than doing it verbally because you have time for corrections and you remember what you wrote (having labored on it for 1h+).  I did this for a bit more than a year. 

I suggest that you start writing every day to a friend of yours in Bulgarian and have them respond in Bulgarian even if they speak English.  If you progress to writing long letters you should improve significantly in a year.