It's raining again in New York and I have to do laundry again. Go figure. Last time I did laundry it was raining. It's no biggie if you have a car to get into to drive your laundry to the laundry mat, or better yet, you don't have to go anywhere because you have a washer and dryer at home. But alas, these are not luxuries I enjoy at this time in my life. Carrying a load of laundry while trying to balance an umbrella and detergent is no easy task. I even took my push cart last time, and it was still difficult. Instead, I feel like staying in doors and curling up to a book. Yep, I said it. I am going to READ. I just read a friend's blog post about wanting to read a lot this summer, though she admitted to being not the greatest reader. I can relate. I have never been a big reader, and I take a really long time to get through a book. I also feel like I get bored quickly. Typically, if the book doesn't grab me within the first few pages, I have a hard time committing to it. Ha. It's like my relationships, only I'm the book, not the reader. If someone would just keep reading, for crying out loud...
This is a good depiction of how I feel about that above statement.And that leads me to my renewed effort to READ often. I gotta give books a decent shot, right?! I can't be a hypocrite. I was talking to someone about this the other day, how I've never loved to read, but wish I did. And then I thought, well, have I ever really tried it long enough? I blamed the lack of desire on the fact that I've been forced to read things (in school) my entire life. But leisure reading is something entirely different. I love books themselves, especially used ones. I used to buy them from second-hand stores all the time, with the intent to read them. I usually would pick them up, begin to read them, and then get distracted with something else. I had an entire, tall bookcase full of 'em! I got rid of most of them when I moved to NYC.
A year or so back, I picked up some books and lost myself in them, and it was a good thing. Reading is a form of escape, no? It's an approved form of escape, even. So, I'm doin' it. I have my entire summer off, lots of free time on my hands, and I'm going to make a point to read, dangit! And this is where I'm going to start:
It was on my roommate's shelf. Only a hundred and something pages. Startin' out small. Don't judge me.
I finished reading my first book of the summer (and I don't think it's even officially summer, yet)! Again, I started out small, but it was powerful. If I haven't said this yet, something else that has been on my mind lately is that I have no room to complain about my life (though I do all too often). I have a fantastic life. There are billions of people in the world who have far more challenging and trying times to concur. "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" just confirmed that thought. It's the author's thoughts and experiences after he has a stroke, goes into a coma, and comes out totally paralyzed with "locked-in syndrome". He wrote the entire thing by blinking his eye and having an interpreter figure out, using a special alphabet chart, what he wanted to say. He died two months after it was published. Now, that kind of story brings life into perspective.
