Guest Post: Alexandra Returns to Reading

I am currently buried under family members, food, festival, and fun, so some kind bloggers have graciously agreed to guest post here on eclectic / eccentric.

Today, Alexandra from Good Day, Regular People shares with you her thoughts on the effect blogging has on reading time.

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Has Blogging Affected Your Reading Life?

A few weeks ago, Trisha posted on her ever growing TBR list and the accompanying anxiety that grows along with it. Her post smacked of what has happened to my reading life, since I began blogging. And I don't like it.

I've always been hungry for books. I would go through them like popcorn ever since I taught myself to read at age 4, when my grandmother became too busy to read to me as more brothers and sisters came along. In my childhood room, there would be a minimum of 3 books bookmarked, that I'd be reading simultaneously.

I was the bookworm kid who'd get caught with the flashlight on under the covers, after lights out, just reading "one more chapter." Sleep deprived was how I made my way through grade school and high school. All due to the written word. I couldn't get enough of it. I was always on the look out for what to read next.  I would look over people's shoulders on the bus, or in the library, to see what they were reading.

This has been my reading life for the past too many years to count or to say how long it's been. That all changed when I began blogging this past winter. I did not know, nor could've predicted, that no longer reading would be a fallout from my blogging. Aside from blogging being a mass consumer of time, it has also eaten up my before bedtime nightly ritual of curling up with a good book. The thing is, I love blogging. I love meeting people who come to my blog. I love visiting other blogs.

I would enter my room, and see the pile of TBR books, one stacked on top of the other, right next to my bed. Before I began blogging, I'd reach for the book on top, every night, without change, and read. Now, I see this pile of books, and they remind me how I just don't read anymore. I had to move the stack, so I wouldn't have to visually pass it before getting into bed. The sleep of the guilty is not a refreshing one. I kept promising myself that "after this week," I'd get back to it. I'd promise that "after I get back to my commenters," I'd pick up a book.  But the time never came. As my pile grew, my displeasure at not cracking a book open in months, also grew.

I was not happy. I did not want to stop blogging, I did not want to stop reading blogs, I did not want to stop interacting with the commenters visiting my site.  Clearly, we had the ying to the yang of blogging. I wanted both, but there we had it, the dark and the light. I knew that the only way to have something happen, was to plan for it. Just as your bathrooms won't get cleaned unless you plan to put aside Sunday night to do them, the time had to be made for my books.

I am a happier person when I read. I am a better writer when I read. I am a more interesting person when I read. Reading a book satisfies me in a way that reading blogs can't. I am able to enter a book, and live life there, and return to this new place, every time I open its pages. Reading books is something I do not want to give up.

I now blog only three times a week. That is what works for me, and what I had to do. I look forward to Tuesday, Thursday, and a weekend night as my reading nights. I had to impose these blogging restrictions on myself. It's funny that I had to do this, but there was no other way. I knew that if I kept on "hoping" for a change, that nothing would come. I'm back to reading, I'm happier, my pile of books no longer a reminder of all the reading not getting done. The pile next to my bed now patiently sits and waits for me, knowing that I have made time for my books to be read, three times a week.

Has blogging affected your reading time? What have you done to get your reading life back?