Advice that I've heard in some form over the years which I really like says that one of the worst limits you can put on yourself is a label about how you are or are not. "I am just not good at (this)," "I am incapable of (that)." Of course how debilitating or troubling this thing is depends on where you are applying it. If, say, you tell yourself "I am just not good at flying simply by flapping my arms" and you use this perceived limitation to decline an invitation to take a flying leap off of a really tall building, this perceived limitation is probably good business for you.
These perceptions are another thing when they go something along the lines of "I am just not good at math," "I am bad at dating," "I have no clue when it comes to job interviews." The problem is that these become self-fulfilling prophecies or designations. Of course it is not to say you can just start saying "I am Don Fucking Juan" and suddenly your love life will be transformed. It's just a matter of you developing these ideas about yourself and how those ideas operate on you. If you have reached the conclusion that you are bad at dating, you tend to cling to experiences that reinforce this idea of yourself and dismiss any evidence to the contrary.
I have long told myself that I am a terrible reader. I read slowly, don't finish books, other such self-criticism. Simultaneously I often feel like other people read more than I do, and they get something out of this that I have to miss in my life because I am a terrible reader.
Now I didn't just invent this perceived characteristic for fun. It's based on a rich history of experiences such as beginning books and not finishing them, and trying to read things because something tells me I "should," and finding myself glazing over the words without really processing what I am reading, my mind elsewhere.
That particular experience of glazed-eye non-reading is something I know happens to almost everyone. Without conducting any scientific research, I concluded that the experience is common enough to me, and hinders my ability to, say, learn things, that I sought and received my ADHD diagnosis. This is definitely not the only such experience that led me to seek the diagnosis, but certainly a contributor. Everyone experiences that kinds of things that characterize ADHD, ADHD-diagnoses are doled on when such characteristics hinder one's ability to function satisfactorily in some important areas of life (relationships, work, school).
So, anyway, I started reading The Brothers Karamazov, with some vague notion that it would be a way of challenging my self-appointed label of "bad reader," just for the fun of trying something that internally I tell myself is one of those things that other people do, not me, because I am somehow deficient in this area of life.
The book is 1,042 pages long. After about a month, I am on page 360. That averages to something like 11 pages per day. I don't know that I can really use this as a basis to challenge my label of "bad reader," but I am at least hoping to challenge my notion of "person who does not finish books unless they are Harry Potter books."
I am prompted to write about it now because I am getting to a point at which I often arrive when I decide to read a book: the point at which I stop reading it. That it point is rarely also the point at which I have read the whole thing.
I had set a goal of reading 10-pages per day and that was the kind of goal that kept me reading. In the last week or so I've struggled to keep up with even that goal. I was spending a week with my daughter and family, though, and while I could've easily kept going, I didn't, so what, my routine was off, no big deal. Now I am ready to get back at it. But I find that I am suddenly now really struggling with the glazed-eye non-reading.
This a problem endemic to my existence, a problem which I've decided to co-opt the ADHD label to help describe: my mind simply refusing to be where I am trying to tell it to go. Here, mind, read and absorb the information in this here Brothers Karamazov book, a titanic literary achievement which you are now going to read so that you can be a person who reads titanic literary achievements. I am generally enjoying the story. But... my mind is just on other things. The result is I can sit there for 20 minutes affecting the look of someone reading The Brothers Karamazov, while the truth is I am someone sitting and looking at the pages inside The Brothers Karamazov while pondering my love life, thinking about what I am going to do the next day, or otherwise not reading The Brothers Karamazov.
Maybe The Brothers Karamzov is not such a big deal. But what about when it is training material for a job, a lecture for a class, a phone conversation at work with a client, reviewing case notes for a case on which I am supposed to be working, participating in an important meeting? I can try to tell myself where my mind needs to be, but even the act of telling myself this is a piece of stimuli that sets my brain off on other thoughts. "Here I go again, trailing off... gosh, I can't help it, I just feel the urge to go the gym right now, I feel like I've been sedentary for too long... oh, wait, shit, what did the prof. just say? He's talking about this, now, was this related to... wait, how is it related to that? Can I interrupt and ask him to repeat what he just said? But, wait, what did he just say... how can I ask a question without it basically being some rambling, long-winded form of asking "duhhh, what?"
A mind in open revolt is often useless to wrestle. As far as struggling against the idea of myself as a non-reader, it is silly for me to attach high stakes to the finishing of one simple book, but I am eager to see myself finish The Brothers Karamazov. My recent struggle with reading it got my mind simply on the struggle of reading itself, so instead of spending time reading, here I am writing a long blog entry that will interest practically no one. Maybe now that I've satisfied my mind's urge to get this shit out, I can go back to reading? I don't know. I guess the point is that I will try not to get too flustered if I can't seem to sit down and read this thing at one time. If I can only churn out 3 pages of reading in one sitting, maybe I can try to sit down through 3 simple pages at another point in the day, then at another point in the day, 4 pages. I refuse to gloss over this, if I didn't TRULY read a page, I will go back and read it again until I am satisfied that I've absorbed enough of the story.
Anyway... I feel like doing some push-ups.
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