The Reading Challenge

Reading. It’s something I love, but rarely find time for it. I find excuses, like I do most things I enjoy – oh, I’d love to sit down and delve into a book – maybe after I finish X. Or my favourite “go to” excuse: Oh, I simply can’t this week, it’s been a hell of a week! Next week will be better.

Of course, some of this will sound relatable to anyone with a job, a family and/or studying in school, which is pretty much anyone with a pulse. It’s easy to fall back to some general excuse to delay your personal enjoyments in sacrifice for other more “proper” uses of your time. Like work. Studying. Or more work.

And, speaking as a grad student with a full time job, even more work and more studying.

Or, like I discovered: TV.

I realised in the past few months that I – who runs from one deadline to the next, with very little spare time to be found for myself – watch quite a bit of television when I get home from work. I couldn’t for the life of me remember when TV began to form such a significant portion of my wind down routine after work, but this week, when I sat back, recognised my continued literature unhappiness and a general overarching feeling of unfulfilled TBR pile.

It may seem silly that I didn’t have this realisation before. It is quite literally right before my eyes. Someone doesn’t turn on the TV, navigate to Netflix and mandate I watch it in some forced Clockwork Orange aversion type therapy.

Enter The Sarah Challenge #1: Read More Books

So simple, yeah? Just turn off the boob tube and open up a book, dummy.

(I may have channeled my inner Detective Rosa Diaz in typing the above.)

Of course, yeah, I know the mechanics behind this challenge: it’s simple in execution. But it’s a matter of creating a healthy and conscious habit to read. I’m not going to promise that I’ll never watch TV again. The Sarah Challenge is not that kind of blog. You know, the blog where describe in painful detail about:

how I cancelled Netflix
turned off my wifi
turned in my iPhone for a Nokia brick
converted my TV into a fireplace screen
started to complete my class assignments by hand in medieval-style manuscripts and now submit them to my professors via my army of carrier pigeons
started to wake up at 3am followed by five hours of meditation
run 849 miles a week, barefoot, while receiving all my required nutrients, including water, through the air
sold my Nokia brick in favour of ESP
saved £92,137.35 by not eating, selling all my furniture, and cleaning between the couch cushions

Instead, I’m going for balance to meet my goals. I’ve done the on or off, the black and white, the all or nothing dance before. The all or nothing is a fickle partner, there for the 24 hour dance marathon but not for the weekly class. It doesn’t work. Old habits sneak back in at the first weakened sign of defense, unwelcome but familiar, the hardline end to a false beginning.

“That’s okay,” I’d say, not really believing it was okay. I failed again. “I’ll start again tomorrow. Oh, but since I failed today, I might as well…”

So then….what kind of blog is this?

I’m thinking small to think big. A grand gesture will not sweep my life off its feet; it will be the short love notes in the lunchbox, the midday chuckles and the foot massage just before bed that I need.

So all or nothing? That is not the kind of challenge I’m looking to complete – I’m looking to challenge my habits and realign the time I have in a day to do things that really matter to me.

Not to my boss, not to others, but to me.

Enter Goodreads

I, like many, many others on the internet, use Goodreads to track books I want to read or rate those that I do have time to complete. I’ve used it on and off since 2009, my shelf managed in fits and bursts as I found the time to read and racked my memory of authors and titles.

In revisiting my to-be-read (TBR) shelf in the last few months, I realised to my absolute horror that no books – I repeat, no books – were moving off my list. I kept adding them to the TBR pile, but with nothing marked off. (I am but self-confessed book fiend who relates to the vast majority of @Paperfury’s tweets.)

I started to look through my lists and it was then that I no longer had the desire to read some waiting there, the appeal lost or forgotten.

And then I remembered the ultimate goal for this blog.

To challenge myself. To meet my goals. I won’t live my life another year without marking things off the list.