Hello everyone and welcome to a little retrospective post. I know I have been silent for sometime…yet again. I thought I was on such an upswing of blogging and reading following Blogmas and finishing a book in January. Well, as you can probably easily see, my blog has been silent for the most part. I have not felt motivated at all to write or read in the last few months, which has been very strange for me. I am used to reading over 100 books a year and filling every free moment with reading and talking about reading…what has changed? Well, this has led me to do some self reflecting and ask myself, “Why don’t I want to do the things I absolutely loved anymore?”.

First and foremost, I think the main reason is because I fell in love with a new hobby. Reading has been my main hobby for years and years! I participated in others, but they were not new to me and I had done them for years as well. During the Summer of 2021 specifically August I taught myself how to knit and it became a love for me. Well, let me tell you something it is hard to knit and read. So, I slowly read less and less because of it. Yes, I can listen to audiobooks and I do from time to time, but when I need to count, do yarn overs, and patterning listening to a book leads me to make a lot of mistakes. I am hoping as I knit more, this will be something I can work through, but we shall see.

Life style change is probably the second biggest contributor I would say. I honestly can say I prefer reading physical books, but I do enjoy other formats a lot. But, I think because of some changes I needed to make in my life in recent years not getting my hands on physical books has led me not to pick up my ereader or phone to listen to an audiobook. I have had to downsize a lot in recent years, my library of physical books has really dwindled. Most of the ones I have chosen to keep have been some of my favorite reads of all times or special books that have been signed or picked up at events. That doesn’t really leave a ton of room to add books to the bookshelf I do have and I do not want them to spread around the space, apart from the book I am currently reading on my nightstand. On top of that, I have gotten out of the habit of putting library books on hold at my library. Now, because I think of the pandemic, I got in the habit of really looking at their digital library and downloading stuff onto my kindle and then promptly forgetting they are there because they are just in a kindle that always looks the same. This is for sure something I have realized and need to work on.

So, what does this mean? Well, for me I think this self reflection is really helpful in figuring out what is a priority in my life. I want reading to be one of those again and I think realizing the why is a good tool in getting it back to that place. Now, I don’t want to stop knitting, it is something I love as well, but I think I need to get in the habit of balancing my time better. Why not set aside some time for fun reading? Why not borrow a physical book again? These are things I have under my control and I can change. My limited space is not something I can control. I think I just need to make an effort to find a balance and realize that it is not going to happen over night. It is not going to happen through force, but through my desire to read.

I think two things I am going to try to do over the next two months. The first being requesting physical books from the library again…I need to figure out how to get my login information again. The second I think is setting aside some time in my week to read. I think I kept failing at reintroducing it into my life was because I kept saying doing one book a week or 30 min a day. I was adding pressure to it instead of letting it fit into my time more organically. I feel like I should be happy and proud that I sit down to read once a week at this point. If this week it happens on a Monday, then next week it is on a Thursday…Perfect! I read at least once during the week.

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