My normal weekday routine is to get my husband’s breakfast ready while he showers. Immediately after he leaves for work I get down to the chores, volunteering, errands and workouts I had planned for that day. This morning was different. I put off being a responsible adult until after I finished the book I had started two nights earlier. The only problem with indulging this lapse in responsibility is that its difficult to get back on the adult track. This is why I rarely indulge in weekday morning reading time, and save it for after the chores are done and we’re ready to settle in for the evening. If I morning read, its all I want to do for the rest of the day. I’ve always loved to read. Always. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t a reader. I read everything. Anything. Anytime. Anywhere. It got me into trouble with my parents because I’d rather read alone in my room than watch TV with them as a family. I went through phases when I was younger of reading young adult literature, romance novels, sexy novels, historical fiction, Russian and classical literature, science fiction, fantasy fiction, self-help books (most didn’t), and non-fiction about everything from the way the body functions, the mind thinks, animal behavior, earth sciences, religion, outer space, and sustainability. Reading was an obsession. It was an escape from my own reality. Now, I read purely for the enjoyment of the way the words are so craftily strung together to immerse me into the story-line, or so that I have one more piece of trivia under my belt, or so that I’m knowledgeable in an amalgamation of topics. Its not uncommon for people to ask me, “How did you know that?” when I bring up something obscure in conversation. I had read so much on so many topics, fiction and non-fiction, that I can rarely tell them exactly from where that particular piece of knowledge came unless it was recent. My answer is generally, “I remember reading it somewhere, but I can’t remember where.” It probably makes me sound like a fraud; like I’m really making stuff up, but its true. To be fair, I do sometimes make up outlandish tales, but I always fess up to it almost immediately afterwards. A straight face and me are not well acquainted. I should probably already have written a novel by now just based on all the ones I’ve read, my life experience, my dreams, but I do feel my writing vastly inferior to the amazing stories I’ve read in my lifetime. Its a recurring theme and ongoing two-way conversation in my head:
Good Thought: “You should write.”
Bad Thought: “You can’t compete.”
Good Thought: “You have a story to tell.”
Bad Thought: “You have nothing original to say.”
Good Thought and Bad Thought battle it out almost daily. I suppose since I haven’t written a story that makes Bad Thought the winner… for now. Today, perhaps because I was inspired by the story I finished this morning, I let Good Thought win and sat down to write this post before getting back to being responsible. Now that I have, I feel better about going back to my regularly programmed chores.