#37: Climb every mountain 🌄
This week, we're acquiring hobbies, buying ourselves flowers, and playing computer games
I deleted Storygraph a few weeks ago, which caused me a great deal of heartache over something so… trivial. Storygraph is a fantastic Goodreads alternative that gives readers lots of stats, data, and other nerdy information about their reading habits.
For a few good years, I was obsessed (and I have OCD, so I don’t use the word obsessed lightly) with Storygraph. I tracked my pages read and minutes listened with a devotion that bordered on religious. I would sign up for heaps of reading challenges, only to fall short and remove myself from the challenge so the failed pursuit didn’t get stuck on my profile. And every time I completed a challenge or crossed off a goal, it didn’t give me that same rush of success-induced dopamine that I’d expected. I just felt sort of empty, like getting a really good grade on a test only to look up and see that no one’s in the room to hear the good news. That’s a very dramatic, but accurate, metaphor.
So I deleted Storygraph. I removed the app from my phone and decided I’d start writing down the books I read in a little bedazzled journal I keep on my nightstand (which is a pile of boxes from Christmas that are too pretty to throw away). Since making the shift from screen to paper, I’ve read maybe two or three books.
What does this tell me? That I was forcing myself to read just to achieve an arbitrary number of of books read per year. That reading 100 books was important to me because I wanted to say I’d read 100 books; that I didn’t find joy in the actual reading itself.
How often do we back ourselves into corners like this? We create these markers of success or progress just so we can say we’ve reached the altitude we set out to reach. So we can touch the mountaintop we bragged about one day touching. But I don’t think we give enough credence to the actual experience of climbing the mountain. (Cue The Sound of Music, please!)
I wrote last week that I am ever-so-slowly working my way through Anna Karenina. I’m maybe 20% through the book and have been for a solid week. But it’s a massive book, and at least I’m crawling through the narrative at a pace that makes sense for me. Releasing the expectation that we have to check something off of an arbitrary list gives us the freedom to experience the growth and wonder of what happens before we arrive at the place we desired. Because one day, we’ll look back with all the wisdom we’ve earned and realize that we were doing just fine all along.
“Required” reading:
A gorgeous essay on learning to play the piano when there is no recital and other artistic quandaries (Defector)
What is a quarter-life crisis? (
for )I felt personally victimized by this article on eldest daughter syndrome (The Everygirl)
“You didn’t read that, you saw it on TikTok” (
)This romance bookstore just gave me another reason to plan a trip back to Chicago (Shondaland)
Valentine’s day starter kit:
Something sweet: my favorite hot fudge recipe that I mentioned in last week’s newsletter
Bubbly: my favorite Champagne cocktail (plus a mocktail recipe for people who also can’t produce their own melatonin)
Bouquet: did you know Trader Joe’s had roses for only $1 per stem??!?
Serenade: my favorite playlist to accompany a candy-colored romance novel
Romantic poetry: here’s one of my favorite poems. It gives Valentine’s Day sweetness with a little twist.
Miscellany:
Can we just talk about Google Arts & Culture??!? I love this website. You want to work on a puzzle that features Andy Warhol’s portrait of Grace Kelly? No sweat; Google Arts & Culture. Craving a crossword that teaches you about science & tech? Google Arts & Culture. Oh, and the NASA coloring book? Yeah, they’ve got that too.
Speaking of mindless things to do when you need to have no thoughts in your brain: feed some virtual fish!
And for my fellow bookworms, a literary-based Wordle spinoff.
thank you for the mention angel!!!