I really enjoy reading BUT I am also easily distracted by social media or I just get lazy.
I recently wrote about a quirk of mine:
“I have this "quirk" (I'm using the word quirk because I learnt in therapy that if I use words such as silly then I am telling other people the things I do are silly, and I don't think this. It is a quirk I suppose which feels a bit more accepting than "It's a silly thing I do"). Anyway, this quirk I have is that I can get very attached to people. This tends to be on TV programmes I watch or books I read, occasionally films but mostly programmes or books. When I've finished the programme or book I can find it hard to have the loss of that person, it's almost like the grieving process. Sometimes with a book, I then can't pick another one up for a while, until I have really grieved for that character. It's not even that the character has died, it's the fact that a series or the book is finished therefore that person is "no longer in my life".
So sometimes I have to look at why I feel these bonds and attachments with certain people and characters.”
This happened to me in February this year, after reading “The Couple at No 9” by Claire Douglas. I was so attached to the characters that I had to grieve for them.
It wasn’t until a late night Whatsapp chat with one of my best friends, and her mentioning she was reading, and me saying I hadn’t picked a book up for a while that I picked one up again.
It was nice to also feel a bit like I was being held accountable as I'd said I will let her know the next day how many pages I'd read.
Earlier on in the year I set myself a reading goal on the app GoodReads to read 8 books this year. The same target as last year. 8 books is not a lot, I know, but for me it would be an achievement. I didn’t hit that goal last year having only read 5 books. I’ll either read a book in 4 days or take months because I don’t pick it up enough.
So by August I’d only read 2 books and thought there was no way I’d hit my 8 book goal.
Well, how wrong I was.
I got the bug. I finished the book I’d picked up in 2 days and then moved on to another which took me 4 days, then another which again only took me a small number of days and before I knew it, the notification came up on GoodReads that I’d achieved my challenge!
I didn’t think I’d feel so proud of myself.
It helps that, when I work, I can’t sit in silence so I tend to have tv programmes on in the background so can watch them and work at the same time, therefore this free’s my evenings and spare time up so reading can take the place of looking at a screen.
I know the genre that I like and have my favourite authors (if you haven’t read a Claire Douglas book and like Thriller books, you must check her out!)
I also recently took a gamble and tried a different genre and read “It Ends with Us”, again finishing it in 4 days and loving it so much and wanting more that just 3 hours after I finished it popped to Asda to buy the follow up “It Starts With Us”, which in just a day and a half I am 45% through.
It helps using the GoodReads app because you can set it to tell you the percentage of the book you are through once you tell it what page you are up to.
I guess the “goal” aspect of “I want to get to 50%” “I want to get to 60%” and seeing that number go up also encourages me to read.
I haven’t changed my reading challenge goal, although I have the option to, because I think I’ll then feel the pressure if something comes up and I can’t reach that target. Instead it is pushing me knowing I am going above the challenge I already set myself.
I love getting lost in a book, I love the achievement of finishing one, the time that goes into reading. When watching a tv show you can still get distracted by your phone, by what else is going on around you, but when reading a book if I hear a notification on my phone I let it sit there whilst I finish a chapter or get to a certain amount of pages.
I didn’t think reading would affect my Wellbeing so much.
I feel addicted to it, to finding even just 5 minutes in my day to read another couple of pages and it’s one thing that is making me take breaks from my laptop when working. Before, I would work through my breaks or sit and have lunch at my desk whilst replying to emails or completing a report.
Now, I take that time to read. If I’m feeling like I need time away from my laptop I don’t do it to then go and look at another screen, knowing I can still pop over to my laptop to “check if I have 1 new email” or “1 new chat notification”. Instead I stick to the “just one chapter” or “5 pages more then I’ll look” rule.
I love Claire Douglas books so much that I have a rule that I can read up to 2 books from other authors then have to read one of hers, until of course I run out of her books and then this rule will have to be broken!
My next goal, is to expand the genres I read and to try other things and not just get stuck in a loop of “thriller only”. And to maybe set myself a time I must stop reading at night because it’s far too easy to keep reading until 1am!
