My Toxic Relationship With Books
How many books are enough books?
This year I wanted to read 60 books. Small, Big, Fiction, Non-fiction, etc.
I was travelled for 3 months and then took another 2 months to find a job.
Apart from giving Interviews, I also kept reading, to a point that, I cut down all OTTs because building worlds in my head was much better than seeing something on a screen.
My work started and things got stressful at work. But still, I would try to keep my drowsy eyes open and read something, anything.
I read 28 books as of today(March 31st 2022) this year. Two days back I was screwing my eyes into all the books I am yet to read(a lot of books) and trying to pick the quickest one I could complete this month so by end of 3rd month, I at least wanted to be on my 30th book.
I was so stressed about it that I stopped looking at my mind in terms of what I felt like reading at that point in time. It was stressful to a point that I started being unhappy about not able to choose a book and being confident about finishing it in two nights(which I often can do with a few shorter books).
Then it hit me. I started reading books for pleasure and cut down OTTs so I can spend more time on this. I felt I am being stressed about things that aren’t even a problem in the first place.
I realised nothing is worth losing peace of mind. I pushed all the books back to their places. I told myself that, I am not going to read just because I need to finish something.
After a while, my eyes went to 3 books. I picked one of them, read the intro. Did the same again with the next two.
I picked one book (Playing To Win) and I knew I can read only a few pages and then I would be travelling. Mentally I made a calculation and knew I may be able to finish mid next month and then realised I am now not obsessed about finishing a book in 2–3 days or anything as such.
When we do things for pleasure, we need to know when we can enjoy it and what’s the tipping point where it all goes away.
I never thought I could develop a toxic relationship with books. But here I am done it(and bounced back).
