Reading!

I miss reading for fun....I used to partake in guilty pleasure reading all the time. When I was little my mother used to scold me for staying up until the early hours of the morning reading books by my nightlight in my room, and then rushing to bed when I heard her coming down the hall, diving head first into my pillow, pretending to be asleep when she opened the door.  Discovering, on a winding road in southwest Arkansas, that I could not read in cars without getting motion sickness was one of the worst realizations of my childhood.

I've been trying to pinpoint when I really stopped reading.  I suppose it slumped in high school when I was gone on debate tournaments, band competitions, UIL competitions, or softball games or tournaments three out of four weekends of the month for four years.  Then I get to college, demotivated and uninterested in pretty much anything besides being in College Station and at A&M, that reading anything pretty much takes a back burner to new found freedom to do, well, nothing.  Then, when I declared a major in English Literature I was back to reading, and read a lot of really great books-classics I'd heard of my whole life but never took the time to read-and loved it.  But it was still just for school, nothing really on my own.  Even in the summers, especially with orientation, it was difficult to take the time to let myself escape to the pages of a book. 

And I guess that's what it boils down to, letting myself escape.  I place so many demands on my time.  Many of them are for school, work, or studying, and they should be there.  Some demands are social, which are important.  But what about the demands I place on myself for me.  My time.  What do I do with that now? Sleep, watch the three TV shows I insist I stay on top of...and mostly waste away on social media.  Facebook, the one of the best and worst parts of my social existence.  I've been contemplating it shutting it down for weeks, and something hasn't let me do it yet.  Admittedly, I have been reconnecting, and I'm really glad I didn't shut it down when I got back to Iowa like I thought I would or that wouldn't have happened, but still.  I need my time to be more about things I want to do, not stalking the lives of people I really don't even talk to anymore.

That being said I read two books this weekend, finishing the Hunger Game trilogy.  And loved every minute of it.  Stayed in on a Friday, read most of the day on Saturday, stayed up nearly all night Saturday night, relaxing.  Reading.  Getting lost in a completely fictional world that is not my own.  And it was wonderful.