Post Confessional Blues

So. I confessed here at Signify back in October (2010) to the strangely large number of books that I read all at the same time. The sad thing is, I found another stack of three or four more books that I failed to round up in my counting, so it’s even worse than I confessed at first.

Since then, I have honesty been trying to do better. My usual MO is to have about six or seven books, constantly jumping between them, with a backup bunch of nine or ten that I can switch in and out of the "current" reading if I feel the need, with a bunch more in strategic places like the car, for instance, which I read while waiting for the kids or whatever. And I have some larger books that are almost like textbooks, on history and art and such, that I often read in bits and pieces. And then I have the things I read for my work, which are many.

But I have been trying to do better. I have stacked up all the books in one spot. I selected three of them. One for next to the bed, which I think of as my “fun” read: a novel or biography, that kind of thing. Another one to go with me wherever I am around the house, which I think of as my “learning” read, which is the science or art or whatever book. And then one current “read for work” book, which is tough because I have a lot of things I need to keep up on with my work. Three books maximum. And I’ve really been trying to stick with this. I’m trying very consciously to NOT read the other books in the stack until I’ve finished one of the three. I’m trying to keep it at three, which seems reasonable.

I’m serious about this. But it’s hard to do.

I honestly find myself almost accidentally taking a book from the stack, you know, almost by reflex. They haunt me. So I have to stop myself. Sit it back down. Move on. And, on top of that, I just got a new book that I have to wait to read, which I don’t want to do. I just don’t. And if I choose to read it next, that means the things in the stack stay in the stack even longer.

Sigh.

I’m going to try to stick with this, but I know it’s not going to be easy. And I don’t even have a compelling moral reason to do it. I wish I did, as that helps me most of the time. I have no problem at all with the idea of doing some things simply because they are the right thing to do. There is a lot of peace in that. But in this case it's just about trying to discipline myself and be more productive and less scatter brained than I already am.

Oh, the humanity.



Romans 7:14-8:4
Peace to you.

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