I'm facing a Reading Crisis in my life right now!
The reader in me has been having problems lately with focusing on any sort of reading routine. Here are my thoughts about it.
The last time I finished reading a book was already months ago. And I have been “trying” to read regularly ever since but nothing is really working to get me back into the reading groove. I don’t know why that is.. Or maybe I do and perhaps I’m just denying it!
I’m not able to just sit down with a book and spend a long time reading it like I used to do a few years ago. I don’t even remember when was the last time I did that. My reading habit just feels off for some reason lately. There is always something else that seems to pull me away from what I know I should do. And it’s nothing mysterious at all, just the usual stuff that keeps me away from reading, like ‘relaxing’ by watching TV for hours day after day, or spending all of the little chunks of time through the day with my phone in hand rather than a book or kindle, or just the pure mindless internet browsing.
That’s it; those are my captors!
And the reader in me really took the fall. I feel lost in a lot of ways. My focus seems to be everywhere except in the here and now, except on the book in front of me.
In the last two months, I began reading six different books. Six! Can you believe that? And I didn’t even reach half way through in any of them.
I began reading two ebooks on Kindle. Apart from kindle, I picked up two hardcovers, one non-fiction about trees and the other a biography about Da Vinci; one science book about Climate Change; and finally two suspense thrillers in paperback. Oh and I purchased two more novels to “read soon.” And while I’m at it, I added ten more into my Amazon wish list.
Here is how it mostly went: I start reading a book, and a few pages later, I simply let my mind wander about the others on my shelf and end up picking up another book which I then read for a couple of chapters before answering the call of another one. This cycle goes on until I feel like shit and realize that I lost my reading mojo.
And just like that the reading crisis has been upon me!
It’s certainly not the first time I’m in this rut. I’ve seen many reading crises before. But what’s new this time around is how it is making me feel. For some reason, it makes me feel very old. As if my mind is losing its edge due to my growing age. And I’m only 33!
Damn! I need to do something about this.
To be honest, I don’t really know what I’m going to do. I don’t have a formula to leap out of this reading-rut. I just really felt like writing about all this here just to get my thoughts out. Writing helps me think clearly. Always!
But if there is anything I’ve learnt from my past, it is this: consistency is the key.
So, this is what I’m going to do. I’m gonna stick to the one book that’s most interesting to me right now. And I’m gonna finish reading it fully.
Then and only then am I going to move on to another one.