I can't motivate to read. Even though I love the current book, even though I have time. I constantly wonder why it's so hard to just sit down and open a book. I have plenty of excuses. I tell myself it'll make me tired and I'll just end up falling asleep. I tell myself I won't have enough time to read an entire chapter (and it really irks me to stop mid chapter). Or I want to work on my knitting instead. And the perennial excuse, it is so much easier to just turn on the TV or waste time on the Internet. I don't even have my cable hooked up, and I still manage to watch hours on end of Farscape and Doctor Who... instead of reading.
And I spent 15 minutes just now reading about procrastination on the web.
I'm about a quarter of the way through A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, which is the first friend recommendation I added to the list (thanks JMZ). I love the characters and their voices. The family's poverty communicates essential truths about the complexities of life. The images are so rich - the meat on their table; the clothes on the dapper father; the Williamsburg street life.
I hear that many people read this book in their younger years, and I do recommend picking it up again - or if you're like me, trying it for the first time.
That is, if you can get over your own procrastination traps.
I know we'd like to think of reading as this easy pleasure, as easy as watching TV, but it's hard for me to get started. So I set a timer for like 25 minutes. It sounds like work, but it just reassures me that whatever it is that seems more pressing, I'll have time for it after I do some reading. It makes it easier to concentrate, to shut out the other tasks. And of course I'm always glad I did it afterward.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good idea. I've also thought of setting aside an extra half hour in the morning for reading, before the rest of the day starts to weigh in. The nice weather today helped too!
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