Just how many books have I read this year? Not counting ones I read in late 2013, but dropped in for completeness sake.
The total count in 2014: Fifty one so far.
Which seems like a fair number. Not insane, but still many more than I've managed in prior years.
Generally, I'd gobble down around a dozen books a year for pleasure, and an equivalent number for work.
Those numbers have risen over the last few years, and I wonder...where exactly did I find the time?
Oh, I still watch movies, and still game. Just...less. What I don't do, pretty much ever, is sit down to watch television. Just don't do it. I have no "shows," though I know there are some excellent, funny, well-scripted and acted vids out there. I don't choose to noodle through Netflix on my own. We don't have cable.
And my kids are older, requiring vastly less wrangling than they used to...or at least, wrangling that's considerably less invasive of time and overall capacity to focus.
And I choose to delimit my external commitments, one of the collateral blessings of introversion.
And, as I write more, I find my hunger to read increases. The worlds and stories others spin weave into my own. The turns of phrase and voices of those I read--those I enjoy, at least--are subtly integrated into my own voice, in ways I can't always consciously perceive.
Where does the time come? Ultimately, it comes because I make it.
If you're going to read, you must set aside space for the written word, for the stories that tell themselves in that peculiar, magical space between an author, the page, and your own soul.
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