Scattered

Reading.  My first love, and as of the past couple of years, my lost love.

I grew up with my nose perpetually in one book or another, and I can honestly say that my early habits of copious reading played a major role in the development of my personality, my likes and dislikes, and in my growth as a person.  I never felt complete without at least one book in the immediate vicinity of my person, preferably open in front of me or, if the present circumstances hindered reading, under my arm.   I whiled the days, months, and years away in tales of the past, in legends and myths, in fantastic worlds limited only by the combined imagination of myself and the writers, in galaxies far away or in my own hometown, years ago... or maybe even a few centuries in the future.

To be fair, there was a downside to my degree of reading-dependence.  I at several points in my young life grew dissatisfied with my life, with the present, with the everyday and the normal.  I couldn't stand to go to school every day, when girls like me in novels went off deciding the outcomes of war after war, saving kings, serving as emissaries to foreign lands.  There seemed no excitement, no romance, no stakes in the day-to-day sea of dullness that was my life.  I struggled through depressions, spent years living as though my real life was only the means by which to support my mind, which allowed me to travel elsewhere.  Nevertheless, when I look back, I miss the days when I used to read more.

Reading was somewhat of a third parent to me, instilling me with more real, more relatable reasons to live by the morals and standards that I had been raised with.  It gave me a healthy thirst for something more than the everyday, piqued my palate for the spiritual and the supernatural in preparation for God to work in my life, and gave me something healthier to do than what many kids my age were doing: Neopets, MapleStory, GameBoy.  Not that any of those were bad in and of themselves [indeed, I still have a keen taste for games!], but it meant that my early life was shaped not by media, music, and flickering screens, but rather by words, by thought, by contemplation and an examination of my life that kept my mind active.

Over the past few years, I have begun to experience more freedom in what I do with my time, as well as a good deal more work.  I find myself with less time and less motivation to read--by the time I get out of school, finish homework, get done with everything that has to be done during the course of the day, I am exhausted, worn out, ready for something completely mindless.  I think I first slowed off on reading because I was busy, but now it has degenerated to the point that reading has even become a little more difficult.  My general thought life has become fragmented, scattered. 

I was known as a kid for my freakish focus.  On one occasion, a friend threw a football past my face, so close he thought he hit me and literally between me and the pages of the book I was absorbed in, and completely failed to notice, so engrossed was I in the story.  [As I remember, this was either The Lord of the Rings or one of Tamora Pierce's wonderful novels]  I could do the same things for hours, was fairly steady, was easy to please, and could memorize the lyrics of any song or the lines of any movie by the second time through.  I had a great capacity for learning that I never really appreciated for its worth.

I am not sure how it happened, but I do know that it was around the time when Tenth Avenue North's The Light Meets the Dark and Taylor Swift's Speak Now first came out that I started realizing I wasn't picking up lyrics, even when I tried.  This struck me as disheartening--I'm getting old, I thought.  Then there were the lectures.  I still can't quite figure out whether the greater factor is my worsening focus or my harder classes upon entering college, but focusing on lectures (or even on everyday conversations!) became a thing of real effort.  If I stopped consciously listening for an instant, I would lose track of the lecture for minutes at a time.  It has gotten to the point where I am strongly considering seeing a doctor of some sort to find out whether there is more going on.

How does this relate to reading?  My theory is that my strong reading habits corresponded with my ability to focus--the loss of which prompted the other, I am still trying to evaluate.  I do know that I haven't read anything for my own enjoyment in over a year--including my all-time favorite, The Lord of the Rings.  It is becoming somewhat of an irritant, depressant, and general source of worriment for me. I have compared my issues over and over to ADHD, due to my inability to stay focused on one thing for any period of time unless it genuinely interests me--I can convince myself it is interesting and still get sidetracked by the first train of thought that comes to mind. 

Whatever the issue is, though... in the interest of attempting to regain my old focus and improve on my information retention, I am going with a slightly lighter courseload for the coming semester, dropping the honors course that has caused me so much stress, grief, lost time, lost sleep, lost health, and generally sent my life to pieces, and working on a healthier lifestyle.  It is my hope that with a little more time to read, better physical health, and even my decision to write every day should help me start gluing the fragments of my thought life together and make the whole a bit more cohesive and easier to handle.  As for how the various changes will help, only time will tell.

I've... deviated significantly from the topic of reading.  Ah well, maybe another day.