Scheduling Reading Time

If you had told me at almost any time in my life until now that I'd actually have to schedule time to read, I would have questioned your sanity. But that's exactly what has happened.

I thought that one of the benefits of quitting my day job would be more time to do things like reading. What I didn't count on was that in the past, reading was often a reward for a hard day at work. I'd tell myself that for every lesson planned, every stack of quizzes corrected, every afternoon spent in a meeting I'd allow myself a chapter or two of the book I was in the middle of reading. And of course, usually that chapter or two stretched into three or four.

I still have hard days (I'm currently revising a novel and having to wrestle with more than the usual number of problems, a short week after moving and unpacking and trying to organize a new space), but now they're of my own choosing. I can postpone the revisions as long as I want, right? I don't have to agonize over the perfect word, instead settling for an okay one. So why should I reward myself for something self-imposed?

The upshot is that I'm starved for reading, but every time I crack open a book I've been looking forward to, something pulls me away. But writers have to read, just as painters have to go to galleries and musicians have to go to concerts.

No more. Starting today, I sit and read, with no electronics within reach, for a solid hour. AT LEAST.

It started off well, with a lovely middle-grade novel called The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky by Holly Schindler. I'm nearing the end, and I might just go over my allotted hour to see how the story of Auggie and her grandfather turns out.