Reading has always been very important to me. I learned to read early as part of learning English, so it's a skill I've had for almost as long as I can remember. When I was younger and lived in a small town in South Dakota, I read constantly, probably because I didn't have many friends. The rate slowed down as I got older and busier, but I've managed to keep up an average of a little less than a book a week during my time at Uni.
So far this year I've managed to read all of one and a half books outside of class. Needless to say this has been a very confusing change.
The reasons for my precipitous drop in reading are pretty obvious; I've just been so busy between school (taking no free periods was a mistake), college applications (applying to 10 colleges is a mistake), and all of my various social obligations that I don't have enough time to chew through a whole novel every week. However, I'm also reading less when I do have free time, for reasons that aren't quite as clear to me. Whereas my standard day used to involve at least a little bit of reading as procrastination, the amount of work I now have to do on my computer means that it's much easier to procrastinate online than in the real world. Particularly damaging to my reading habit is the proliferation of college review sites, where in the darkest depths of the days before a major assignment is due I spend inordinate amounts of time telling myself that technically, reading what Samantha K. thinks of her daughter's time at School X is more useful than reading fiction, because it's at least somewhat related to the big clawing mass that's bearing down on me. Even though these kinds of things are really pointless, I spend hours every week flipping through them because it's easier than actually writing but still "feels" like work.
I do this even though I know for a fact that just reading for pleasure would make me happier and more productive. Stress is one of the biggest reasons I agonize so much over my writing and wait so long to get started, so the reasonable solution would be to do things that reduce stress. Well, reading is the single biggest way I've reduced stress my entire life. But of course to read I'd have to get out of my chair and grab a book, which feels like giving up on the work I need to do RIGHT NOW URGENTLY. So instead I sit down, spend a few hours flickering back and forth between blank pages and tenuously academic articles and videos, getting nothing done and relaxing not even a little bit. By the end of it it's 10 pm, I have four pages due tomorrow, and I can't remember I single thing I've read the entire evening. This is not a healthy cycle, but every time I try to break it I get sucked right back in.
Honestly, I can survive without reading for the duration of this semester, if that's what it takes to survive the college application process. What I'm more afraid of is that my lifelong habit of reading, which has been one of the biggest sources of comfort I've had, is going to be broken by this brief interruption. What if six months from now I pick up a book and get bored within five minutes, then grab another book and get bored again, and then grab a third, and finally start flipping rapid-fire between them and growing increasingly agitated at myself for not understanding any of what's going on? Based on my recent behavior it's a real possibility, and the concept of having to relearn something that's always been natural to me is very frightening. Of course it still hasn't been enough to motivate me to set time aside for reading -- or rather, to actually get around to it when I do set time aside. At this point all I can say is that I hope I manage to figure out to balance work and relaxation in the brief calm afforded by the start of second quarter, and if not that I at least emerge from this period with my love of reading intact.
