The Challenging Thing About Reading Challenges

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photo credit: ginnerobot via photopin cc

photo credit: ginnerobot via photopin cc

Oh, reading challenges. Bookish people either love them or hate them. I have never once heard someone say, “Meh, they’re just okay.” What readers either love or hate about these challenges tends to be related to numbers — the feeling of success when you read x amount of books in a week or a month or a year.

For a long time, I stayed away from them just for that reason because I am a s.l.o.w. reader. I mean… painfully. I get really anxious that if I start reading too fast, I’m going to miss something. Like many others, I also operate on “found reading time.”

Still, while the numbers are certainly a challenge, they feel more like a checklist. A quota that needs to be met. And I don’t know about you, but I know how I am with quotas: once I’ve reached the goal, I feel burnt out and like I just want to take a break. Or a nap. Or one followed by the other.

So… it feels like work.

This is where I start to get to the root of what is, at least for me, problematic about reading challenges. If challenges are going to end that way, what have we really learned from them? Sure, it’s a challenge to meet a quota, but if you’re going to put in all the work, shouldn’t you at least get something out of it?

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A Eulogy for Rocky (Or Why We Love Dogs)

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As I start writing this, it’s either very late Saturday night or very early Sunday morning, depending on how you look at it. It’s 5 a.m. In 4.5 hours, I will have been awake for 24 hours (“spring ahead” was tonight, but I’ve lost all hours of sleep, apparently). I’m exhausted, but can’t sleep, so I’m here because this has been eating away at me all week and I need to write it out. Writing continues to be cheaper than therapy.

The oldest of our two dogs died on Tuesday. His name was Rocky and he was 11.5 years old. I’m having an embarrassing amount of trouble dealing with it. Just about 100 words into this, and I’m already crying my eyes out all over again. I feel silly, like I’m overreacting, but please keep reading and hopefully I’ll be articulate. This is a eulogy for Rocky, but it’s also something that will hopefully resonate with all pet lovers.

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Does Listening to an Audiobook Still Count as Reading?

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photo credit: the bbp via photopin cc

There isn’t a time in my life that I can recall not having books around me to pick up and escape. While most kids probably enjoyed staying home sick from school to watch TV, I enjoyed it because my mom kept plastic bins full of books in my closet, and when I’d stay home sick, she’d put those two bins up on the bed with me so that I could read. Before we went to sleep every night, she read to us. (Meanwhile, my dad made up crazy stories which probably contributed to my love of creative writing, as well. He sometimes also used hand puppets and silly voices to tell those stories, which is possibly why I am amused to review books using a homemade dinosaur puppet on this site.)

Book stores, book fairs, RIF days (Reading is Fun..damental, aka free book day!), library programs, book order forms, you name it and I was bleeding my parents dry doing it. I basically never got in trouble in school unless it was for reading when I was supposed to be paying attention (or not doing my homework because I’d been lost in a book). For a period of time, I wanted to be a “book keeper” when I grew up because I thought this meant someone who collected and shared books. Aka… a librarian. (Now that I know what a book keeper actually does, I would NEVER want to do that. Ever.) I don’t even know if I played at recess until 3rd or 4th grade. I just took out a book and read. It reminds me of this great and totally true thing that one of my college friends said:

“I used to love to play outside and read. And then I kept reading and stopped playing outside, which is how I got to be what I am today: an out-of-shape English major.” 

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On People Who Write Open Letters Blaming the World for Their Problems

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You are your problem. And you're also

Someone emailed me something to read recently. My understanding was that it was originally posted on Facebook. It took me an hour to read because I kept having to take “rage fit” breaks to collect myself. I can’t remember the last time I read something that made me feel so incredibly angry.

The general gist was this: Things didn’t go the way this person wanted them to go, and as a result, this person essentially made an uncomfortable and massive public display of “Here’s everything that’s gone wrong in my life.” The overall tone was, “Do you feel bad for me yet? How about now? Please feel bad for me. Please tell me how bad you feel. Let me tell you some more so you can get started on my pity party. Don’t you agree that I have it worse than everyone else?”

Furthermore, it came just shy of overtly saying, “I’m not actually happy for people who get what I want.” And I mean just shy. It was pretty clear that this person resented everyone who had anything that this person wanted (“I’m happy for my friends, BUT…”). Even if, you know, people worked really hard and made sacrifices in order to better their own situations.

It was grossly selfish, insensitive, and, I’m sure, alienating.

Everyone I know who read this felt similarly. People talked about it in a not-good way.

source: http://heckyeahreactiongifs.tumblr.com/

Reading it felt uncomfortably familiar. Like growing back into your fat jeans after you’d worked so hard to get out of them.

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New Year’s? More Like “Ugh Year’s”

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Now that Christmas is over, everyone is all focused on the new year. Resolutions. Changes to be made. New opportunities. For the last few days, I’ve been noticing people sharing this one post on Facebook about things to let go before the new year, as though it’s ever so simple to just stop your own force of being in merely a few short days. As though, in just hours, you can undo mindsets that have taken years to cultivate. Sure, it’s a nice thought. I just don’t think it’s realistic.

Maybe I’m just not optimistic enough to talk about or believe that a new year means anything anymore.

Or maybe I’m too old. Or maybe it’s both.

I haven’t felt like celebrating New Year’s for the past few years, so I haven’t. One year I was house sitting, so I watched a movie. When it was over, it was a new day. And it just so happened that it was also a new year. Big deal. I went to sleep. Last year I knitted. There have been no countdowns, no champagne toasts, no Rockin’ New Year’s Eve, no fanfare of any kind for me in a few years. Because what really changes? Things change all the time. For the better. For the worse. Whether you want them to or not. They don’t need a year’s permission to do so.

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Frank Jams: Top 5 Favorite Albums of 2013

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Author’s Photo: Sara Bareilles at the Electric Factory in Philly (Oct. 2013).

It’s the end of the year, so I feel obligated to do some reflecting, recapping, and re…nee-ing.

2013 was a pretty big year for me. My nephew was born. I officially became employed full time for the first time since 2009. I finally got to move to the Philly area (which is something I’d been trying to do since I finished undergrad in 2005). I knitted my first full-size blanket. I took up running. I ran my first 5k. I joined Rotary.

I listened to a lot of music.

One of the things I love best about living so close to the city is that I can get to shows easily now (bad for my wallet, but good for my love of live music). I love that I can go to a show on a week night and be home 20-30 minutes after I exit the venue. I was fortunate enough in 2013 to see 3 of my 5 favorite albums of the year performed live.

I’m terrible at ranking. I spend too much time second guessing myself. So here are my desert island top 5 favorite albums of 2013.
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Art Imitating Life: When TV Really Nails It

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By Eddo [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

By Eddo [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I want to preface this by saying that I have never before seen an episode of Glee. While I understand that lots of people love it and that’s cool, it’s just not really my cup of tea.

That being said, it was hard to miss all of the buzz last week when the promo spot for  “The Quarterback” episode was released online. This episode was to be the tribute to Cory Monteith’s character, Finn Hudson. Monteith, as you’re probably aware, died of an accidental overdose this past July. Though I’d never seen a single episode of the show, I watched the promo because I (strangely) gravitate toward tragedy for some reason. Immediately, something felt very familiar to me, and I knew that I’d finally have to watch an episode.

I just finished watching it. And it was brutal. So brutal that, instead of getting caught up on other shows as planned, I’m here, at 2:15 a.m. on a Saturday night/Sunday morning, writing it out.

I remember sitting in homeroom in 8th grade and having the teacher read us a form letter telling us that another student had died. He was a year ahead of me. He committed suicide. I didn’t know him, but I was really shaken up about it because I was in 8th grade. I’d just dealt with my grandmother dying a few months before, but this was different. This was closer to home in terms of age. And it stirred up the emotions that I was still processing from losing my grandma (the first person close to me to die).

That didn’t prepare me for what it would be like when I was teaching.

Fortunately, I never lost anyone I was close to in high school. A few years after graduation, a few of my classmates died, but I wasn’t close to them. My primary observations of teenagers grieving all came from my sister. She lost a friend to an unfortunate gun accident. She lost a friend to cancer. And, two weeks before their high school graduation, she lost one of her very best friends very suddenly to an unknown (at the time) health complication.

And that still didn’t prepare me for what it would be like when I was teaching.

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An Open Letter to Bob Seger, Re: “Old Time Rock and Roll” (cc: Every Wedding DJ Everywhere)

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Hey there, Bob,

How’ve you been? I hope well. As for me, I’ve been very busy — moving, working, settling into a new place, and it’s summer, so we’re well into Wedding Season now. While 2008 was my biggest year by far for attending weddings, several of my friends are getting married this year, and I can’t help but to remember why I really kind of hate wedding receptions.

I’m going to be frank with you, Bob. It’s because of “Old Time Rock and Roll.”

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That Moment When a Dream Becomes a Very Surreal Reality

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Sheldon Cooper Paper BagIf you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you may have picked up on a few things about me in terms of my living situation. If not, here’s the short version: In 2008 I left my teaching job, moved home with my parents for what was supposed to be 10 months, and I’ve been here for five years. I’m 30 years old. For five years I’ve been dreaming about having my own place again.

A lot has changed in those five years — my career track and sense of self, for starters.

So it was kind of a big deal this past weekend when I signed a lease on a new apartment.

Cause for celebration, right?

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Watching the Crash From Afar

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CrashSomeone I love is making a difficult and potentially life-altering decision. Right now. As I type this. I don’t know if it’s the best decision. I don’t know what I think it is. What I do know is that I’ve been watching this person spiral, lose control of things, get into trouble, and second guess everything. We’re beyond the point of saying that something’s got to give because many things have already given. This is the point where something’s got to change.

I’ve never been very good at dealing with change. This is a point that those close to me bring up with relative frequency any time I exhibit even the most remote apprehension about anything. The anxiety leading up to it is often worse for me than the actual change itself, and even when I’m excited for something (my upcoming move, for example), I’m still nervous. I’m still questioning if I’ve made the right choice. I’m still second guessing. The day I turned in my resignation for my first teaching job was completely unexpected. It was something I’d considered, but didn’t plan to do without another job. I found the sign I needed in the form of an email notifying me of a pay freeze that would render me unable to pay my bills. I resigned that morning and spent an hour sitting with my friend in her empty classroom, having a panic attack and crying until my whole face was swollen.

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