The Importance of Pacing Yourself

I’m a reader. The earliest and best memories I have with my mother are when we would read together. My first sense of accomplishment was after finishing all the age appropriate books at my dad’s house when I first moved in. This led to one of my first memories of being gifted books: my stepmother took me to Barnes & Noble to purchase all 7 books in The Chronicles of Narnia, which I promptly finished over the next two weeks. 

The homes I lived in could not hold enough reading material to keep pace with my appetite, and so I learned the joy of rereading. My favorite, to this day, is a book called Lucas by Kevin Brooks. My father, who is not a book reader, but a fan of trade magazines, did what any reasonable parent on a budget would do. He took me to the library. Even though there is a deep pleasure in finding something new in the pages you’ve tread so many times before, I did, on occasion, require something (if you’ll pardon the pun) novel. I still laugh when I think about the first time he took me to our public library. I think I’d been living with him for a year or two, and he was between jobs. It was summer, and he was wearing a white v-neck t-shirt and jeans–his uniform for putzing around the house. He tried to let me park the car that day (it didn’t go well), and then sent me into the library alone. My only directive was to get as many books as I could hold. And so I did. They were done within 2 weeks, and so back again we went. It was one of the best summers. 

I laugh at this memory for a few reasons, but mostly because I have zero idea what he did while I was browsing. I also am now famous (to myself) for checking out books I want to read, but never actually doing so. Instead, I renew and renew and get a fine, so I renew. Even apps like Libby haven’t improved my ability to finish, or even start, a book.

When I got to grad school, I finally learned I did indeed have a threshold for how much I could read in a day, in a week, in a month, in a year. It was high, certainly, but it existed. When I finished school, I was severely depressed, self-medicating, and could barely do the readings I had selected for my then students. It had become, finally, what most people experience reading as: a chore. It was hard. And with this difficulty came a surprising amount of shame. 

It didn’t matter that my colleagues who had already graduated explained a similar cognitive fatigue post-grad school. It didn’t matter that I was using all my energy to do deep emotional work to undo negative thought-patterns and destructive behaviors. Not reading a million books at once had become an identity for me, and a protective one at that. It was something I was good at, and which acted like a shield during some of the worst events in my childhood. Whatever bad thing was happening in front of me, or in a few instances, to me, I could shut it out by simply holding aloft the book I was reading. If I couldn’t see it, it wasn’t happening. 

Last winter, I set a challenge for myself. I was going to finish a book a month. This gave me some flexibility to pick up books I had half finished, while also not limiting me from starting something new. As of today, I have finished 7 books, and I’m really proud of myself. I still have a slew of books half read around the house. But I also have 2 books I’m reading right now, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass audiobook and a hard copy of Kim Kelly’s Fight Like Hell. I may finish one this month. I may finish both. Mostly, I feel confident that I’ll finish, and comfortable if I don’t. 

I know now that my hyperconsumption was a form of moving too fast to be caught by the damaging forces of my childhood. By the time I got to grad school, which requires you to slow down, I had neither the energy nor the skills to unpack and move through those experiences. And so, to not read became a blow to my self-worth. If I wasn’t the best at this one thing, a thing that set me apart from family members who I wanted so desperately to both see me and be nothing like at all, then I had nothing to contribute to this world. It sounds trivial, to say not reading a bunch could have this significant an impact. And to be fair, it’s not the only thing which contributed to that thought pattern. But it is one of the elements in my life over which I had control, and in that regard, reacquainting myself with the true pleasure of reading has been an important milestone in my growth and healing.

I don’t need to read the most to be the best. I also don’t need to be the best to be worthy of love, or respect, or kindness. I do, however, need to know how the story ends. 

Stay curious-

Rachel