The tracking of it all

When you Google how to get over a reading slump, you find lots of tips, some helpful, others open doors. As someone who has had a reading stop for a while in the past, I can sympathise immensely. However, I have found that not every break in reading is a reading slump, even if it might feel like it.

What I have found for myself is that when the end of the year nears, I am usually satisfied with my reading goal. I always want to end it on a good number, no matter how arbitrary that number is. And thus around Christmas, I know which books I want to finish for the end of the year and which once I don’t. I also watch a ton of Christmas films during this period. It’s the reason I can chat about a Christmas film every month throughout the year. I also catch up on other media.

That is to say, I don’t watch a lot of tv. I rarely watch films and such. I do a rewatch on occasion, and I love documentaries. Sure, I go to the movies, but almost everything I consume in that regard, I talk about on this blog, whereas I read plenty of books that I never chat about at all. It’s skewed, is my meaning.

I don’t think my not watching a ton of tv is is strange because you have to have time somewhere to read as much as I do. Having said that, though, at the end of the year, when the snow covers the windows, I will be sat in front of a TV, cup of tea in hand, watching the films that have been gathering dust on my digital list throughout the year.

In the first half of the year, I don’t read that much, then the sun starts shining, and I pick up book after book and enjoy them all. It’s a natural cycle I have discovered since tracking my reading habits. The books I tend to navigate towards at the start of the year are longer books. That’s a story for a different day, though.

Having said all that, the idea is that even though it might look like a reading slump, it actually is not. It’s the natural way my reading goes. It is almost impossible for me to read consistently throughout the year. It’s not a problem, and even if it was, it sorts itself out. I think it’s important to give yourself a lot of grace and to choose a reading goal that is relatively easy to reach. But it’s okay for you to not read that much for a while, be it that you are not feeling it or something else. We don’t have to drag ourselves out of it; sometimes, we need to let it be.