Losing My Passion and Finding It Again

For someone who loves books, I don't read as much as I should. Or as much as I want to.

I always blamed school. Between classes and homework and extra curricular activities and weekend competitions and part-time jobs, there was almost no downtime left. So I only read on breaks. Winter break, summer, spring, didn't matter. If it was more than a couple days long, I'd pull out my never-ending to-read list, hit the library, and dive in. But as soon as school started up, reading for fun became obsolete once again.

Here's the thing. I graduated almost a year ago. And I have gone through these same phases without school as an excuse.

This last one has been particularly strange. See, I went on vacation in January. I hadn't been reading much, had been reading the same book for over a month- I only ever seemed to make time to read while on the train to and from job interviews. However, I brought that book and 3 extras for my week of vacation.

I finished the one I had been reading, The Heart of Henry Quantum, on the plane. Over the first few days, I read Spill Simmer Falter Wither. The last few days, I read Barkskins.

It's now May. I'm still reading Barkskins.

To be fair, it is over 700 pages, but if I really wanted to, I could read that in a day or two. As I took the plane back home, my motivation to read plummeted. Yes, I still read it on the train, but I went on significantly less interviews downtown in the following months. My reading all but ground to a stop.

But I wasn't going to give up. It was a matter of pride now.

I did read another book in February or March for my internship. The Champion's Game. It only took a couple hours. But then my focus went back to Barkskins, yet I did not read it ferociously.

It was only last week, when there was a particularly slow day at work, that I felt that passion and joy for reading come back to me. Someone left The Hate U Give at the register I was working at. I recognized the title, and was curious. I read the description. Definitely worth a read. Gave the first few pages a try.

The next thing I knew, I was 150 pages in and my shift was over.

The next day, I snagged a copy and brought it with me to the register, read the rest, and picked up another book.

While I still haven't finished Barkskins, I did read another hundred or so pages the other day (yes, while on the train) and am feeling a lot more of that old passion for books. Sometimes, it just takes a great read to bring that spark back.

I guess the moral of the story is it's OK to take a break from something. Try something new, look at it a different way. Find the joy again. Don't let yourself just burn out.