We had an unexpected pleasure come into our lives last month that goes by the name of Eclipse. No, not an eclipse of the moon or sun, but rather a little ball of floof! Anyone who has raised a puppy from 8 weeks or earlier knows that training up a pup from ground zero is a task of patience and bucketloads of time. This girly joined our family about a month ago and she has a long way before she can be as well trained as our lovely Nova, but she’s on the right track!
All this to say, all of our sparse free time has gone to the dogs, literally, so anything beyond our work and maintaining our over-planted, at-weight-capacity balcony garden has been siphoned away. With T transitioning into his doctoral program with a full slate of classes this semester, it’s likely his pockets will be emptied of even more free time. As such, I had a (insert sarcastic tone) brilliant thought: why not catalogue some of my backlogs and try to develop a plan to tackle some of them?
I’m sure in the sea of content, you also have had your fair share of experiences with the slow—or, as it seems with the modern cascade of content, quite the opposite—accumulation of materials that have piqued your interest. Most of my backlogs involve solo hobbies. Some, but not all of which, are:
- Reading through my accumulation of books
- Forging through pyrography projects
- Relaxing with the dozens of untouched video games
- Sitting down and writing out the thousandth long-form idea
- Perusing through my collection of hundreds of science magazines
- Learning with the dozens of online classes and skills on my wishlist
Since writing stories can be time intensive (I personally like to write in 1-2 hr chunks), and the same goes for pyrography (when filming time lapses, it’s best to record in similar chunks), I need something other than the endless scroll to fill the interspersed 10-15 minute chunks of reprieve throughout my day.
Given that I have two bookcases overflowing with the sweet scent of bound paper, most gifted but a fair amount picked up with the desire and true intention to read, I decided to size up my shelves once and for all.
The tally?
22,791 unread pages. If I wanted to finish that in a year, that’s a little more than 62 pages a day.
Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Well, here in lies the problem. Some of those books are light and fluffy, easy little reads that I could devour in a handful of hours, while others are dense, intellectual discussions of topics from the human condition to the spread of cholera (yeah, I know that spread is rather random). And this is just what has made it to my place. Still more exist at my parents’ house in anticipation of the day I crack them open. Even more titles are stacked on my To Be Read (TBR) list.
If I have learned anything about myself, if I dare to attempt to read all of these in a timely manner, simply setting a goal of 62 pages a day won’t cut it. I’d best start small since I have gotten out of the habit of reading, say 15 minutes a day to start.
Out of pure curiosity, I also want to track how fast I read and if, at all, I get faster over time. I read a lot of technical papers for my work, but just as one who reads a lot of modern literature may find a bit of a slog to read a Victorian classic, reading technical papers is a bit of a different ball game to novels. There are a few metrics I am interested in tracking such as time spent, pages read, and what kind of book among others. I am just imagining the data to sift through already with a bit of perkiness. I suppose I am a scientist by trade for a reason.
On the other side of the coin, I like to write stories and hope that falling back on reading will spark new ideas and inspiration to sit down and crank out some works (also on my infinite backlog). Perhaps this “challenge” is simply a distraction, but I have never heard a person, writer or not, say that reading did not enrich their lives in one way or another.
Alright, enough of the rambling. Laying it out plain and simple, this is not a challenge to read my whole personal library within a year, much less my full TBR (To Be Read). Instead, I want to focus on repairing my habit of reading for fun first, so for the first month, my goal is to simply get into a regular reading pattern with 15 minutes a day. This is not a limit or a rule, but a target to start. After a month, I’ll come back to review my progress and revise my target. What that will be, time has yet to tell.
The Dragon's Den 