This is such a great post and I really sympathise. I currently have, for the first time in my life, a lot of free time. However, now that I have the time, my ability to do all the things I thought I would if I had more free time, seems completely diminished. I actually find reading poetry - and reading in general - hard work at this stage of life. I know there was a time long ago when I loved reading, so I dearly want to regain that feeling.
Weirdly, I, too, drew myself a little chart on graph paper to colour in for my periods of reading and writing. I think it lasted a week, so you're doing better than me 😁
Thanks! Wow that's so interesting that your time has opened up but your finding it difficult to do all the things you thought you would... I wonder why that is, maybe the loss of structure, or maybe if this is the first time in a long time that you've had that kind of space it's on to let yourself rest a while before pushing to do all of the things? Life is so busy, I feel like most of us run on exhaustion, I think if I suddenly had a glut of time I'd probably collapse for a while before finding my way back in! But I may be way ogg thr mark there haha.
Either way I sympathise, and the other thing I wonder that I didn put in this post is how much - in a world of quick fixes and short videos and episodes etc - whether there's a certain amount of needing to retrain ourselves into reading, and a much slower way of experiencing...
This is a great article Rachael & one I can definitely identify with, the way reading gets relegated to the bottom of the list when actually, everything we read feeds our creative process in some way. There are some poets who say a writing session should be more than 50% reading & the rest for writing. So instead of thinking 'ok, I've got an hour to write, it should be OK, I've got an hour - I'll read that new pamphlet I've been wanting to read for 30 minutes & then do some writing'. I'm trying to keep poetry books on the breakfast table so I can at least read a few poems (while trying not to get porridge or coffee on them) every day. It's tough though! I've been trying to fit in more fiction too but leave it till bedtime then fall asleep after a few pages. Yesterday I purposely got a bus to an event so I could read on the way & way back.
This is such a great post and I really sympathise. I currently have, for the first time in my life, a lot of free time. However, now that I have the time, my ability to do all the things I thought I would if I had more free time, seems completely diminished. I actually find reading poetry - and reading in general - hard work at this stage of life. I know there was a time long ago when I loved reading, so I dearly want to regain that feeling.
Weirdly, I, too, drew myself a little chart on graph paper to colour in for my periods of reading and writing. I think it lasted a week, so you're doing better than me 😁
Thanks! Wow that's so interesting that your time has opened up but your finding it difficult to do all the things you thought you would... I wonder why that is, maybe the loss of structure, or maybe if this is the first time in a long time that you've had that kind of space it's on to let yourself rest a while before pushing to do all of the things? Life is so busy, I feel like most of us run on exhaustion, I think if I suddenly had a glut of time I'd probably collapse for a while before finding my way back in! But I may be way ogg thr mark there haha.
Either way I sympathise, and the other thing I wonder that I didn put in this post is how much - in a world of quick fixes and short videos and episodes etc - whether there's a certain amount of needing to retrain ourselves into reading, and a much slower way of experiencing...
Haha, love that we've both tried the chart!
That was meant to say "it's natural you might need to let yourself rest a while" not "it's on to let" 😂
This is a great article Rachael & one I can definitely identify with, the way reading gets relegated to the bottom of the list when actually, everything we read feeds our creative process in some way. There are some poets who say a writing session should be more than 50% reading & the rest for writing. So instead of thinking 'ok, I've got an hour to write, it should be OK, I've got an hour - I'll read that new pamphlet I've been wanting to read for 30 minutes & then do some writing'. I'm trying to keep poetry books on the breakfast table so I can at least read a few poems (while trying not to get porridge or coffee on them) every day. It's tough though! I've been trying to fit in more fiction too but leave it till bedtime then fall asleep after a few pages. Yesterday I purposely got a bus to an event so I could read on the way & way back.