Too many books...and this year marks the seventh time

Somehow I can go for a few days or weeks without reading any book, but then suddenly I'm reading six books. I've always liked reading several books at once, because then I can read whatever fits my mood. The only problem is that it takes me a while to finish all of them.

And I usually lean toward one or two that particularly catch my attention, leaving the less enticing ones to finish later. When these are library books, this can become a problem. After renewing two or three times, I finally have to take them back---and if I remember, check them out again later (I try to make note of the page I was on).

And even if I didn't particularly like the book---if it was a slow start or seemed trite or like something I'd read before---I feel a sort of guilt if I don't follow through and finish it. Then there are the books I don't ever want to finish because they're so rare. For example, Spilling Open by Sabrina Ward Harrison. I've had it for nearly a year, and I still haven't finished it. It's the sort of book that you can just pick up every so often and read a few pages, then set it down for a while.

This is too much like the rest of my life. I have so many hobbies that I don't spend very long on each one before switching to the next for a while. Perhaps I enjoy too many things; perhaps I am indiscriminate; perhaps I spread myself too thin. (I'm the same way with food, music, art, movies, colors...everything.) This is perhaps also why I have so much stuff: I tend to be a bit of a collector and pack-rat. My optimism, combined with my need to create something out of what some people might discard, can become overwhelming.

It's a good thing dating isn't one of my of hobbies, because that could become... (a) self-destructive, (b) time-consuming, (c) bizarre or (d) something else entirely.

On another note, this New Year's Eve, for the seventh year in a row, I will be writing a sort of condensed journal entry for the year. It's also a sort of letter to myself outlining "what I'd like to accomplish in the next year." Not a list of resolutions. I gave that up when I was in my early teens. If I really need to resolve to do something, I'll do it when I'll actually be able to follow through. But I have found that the end of the year provides a good opportunity for collecting the year's events and reflecting on what has taken place.

I wrote the first letter in 1998, when I was 15. I had just completed my first quarter of classes at SPSCC through Running Start---my very first classroom experiences. That can't be six years ago already. I often say that I still feel 15. (Not 14, not 16; just 15.) But when I re-read what I wrote that year, my experiences and perspectives seem so narrow. I have changed, and I have not. I am still learning how to be myself.

Since then, my letters have ranged from two half-size pages (both sides) to 12 full-size pages (also both sides). The latter was written last year when I spent most of New Year's Day in bed, after my snowboarding/migraine/blizzard/vomiting ordeal, which is one reason it was so long. And perhaps it was also long because 2003 was an eventful year, with graduating from college, buying my first car and getting my first grown-up job. This year it will probably be much shorter: "I worked. A lot."

But I'm sure I'll find more to say. I always do.

Comments

[jen lemen]

i love that sabrina ward harrison book, too. do you know she's coming out with a new one very soon? i have to go pine at her site every couple of days, the pages are so beautiful.

[April]

Yes, Messy Thrilling Life is her latest. I have Brave on the Rocks waiting for me when I'm done with Spilling Open. It's all too beautiful. I love looking at the art on her site too; she has a bunch of other stuff for sale.

I had always wanted to do a book of my own with poetry and photographs and other things, and I've finally started on some semblance of one---partially inspired by Sabrina.