All I Wanna Do

I've changed a lot as I've gotten older. In a lot of different ways, which happens to most people, but one thing that I regret has changed is just how adamantly I read books. I used to read A LOT. A LOT. Like 75 - 100 books a year on average.

I read romance, horror, thrillers, urban fantasy, contemporary, classics. What I was reading varied by how old I was, what I was in the mood for and by how much of an investment I wanted to make at the time. My record for the year is around the 100 mark (at least of the years that I actually kept a record).

It was actually my uncle who really encouraged me to read. Reading is highly valued on both sides of my family and it was always something I was encouraged to do; But when I say it was really my uncle who encouraged me to read its because he, above everyone else, took an active approach in prodding me along. Boredom, he used to tell me, was only for boring people. Books could show you the entire world, books would help the vocabulary, books would help with grammar, books would make you smarter, and books would ensure that you were never, ever bored. Whether it was to prove his point or just to get me to read more, I don't remember exactly, when I was little he told me that for every book I finished he would give me a (shiny) dollar.

The deal faded off pretty quickly, I didn't need the money then, but the zest for reading didn't and in the years after I powered through many, many books. It became part of my character, something people identified as part of who I was, something that I had in common with cousins and, as I got older, like-minded friends.

In my Mum's house back in Perth I converted my brother's bedroom, once he moved out, into my 'tea room'. I lined most of the wall space with bookcases that I filled with the books I'd collected over the years that had overflowed from the study and overwhelmed my parents's collections. I had a little couch, a coffee table, and an endless supply of tea. It was a little sanctuary.

Reading was also my gateway into writing. I realised that for all the books I'd read and had on my list to read there were stories that I wanted to tell. As a teenager I wrote hundreds and hundreds of pages of scenes, notes, drawings and ideas. I even wrote and published fanfiction on Fanfiction.net based on some of my favourite series' of the day (and wish I'd kept on with it). By the time I was 14 when asked what I wanted to be I'd say that it was a writer. My greatest dream was to write a novel that people liked, to sell the movie rights, be a part of the film production and have input into the costume design. If those costumes won an Oscar, or if any part of the film did, then that would have been a happy bonus.

By the time I was 19 I began to participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) annually during the month of November. The aim was to complete 50,000 words of fiction over the 30 days of November with a voucher for self-publication at the end of the month. I participated for 6 years and finished most years. I have more than one finished, edited manuscripts that I would like to publish someday - if I can overcome the anxiety about negative feedback and criticism. I have no desire to be in the public eye - especially not since my unfortunate radio incident. I didn't quite fancy being told to 'kill myself' by strangers.

Since I've moved across the country, almost 5 years ago now, the compulsion to write and the zest for reading have felt far away. Since my first year the amount of books I've been able to read, or felt like reading, have decreased gradually. The worst year was 2018 when to my unbelievable shame read less than 10.

I have no excuse, no explanation and no one reason as to why. Life, I suppose, just got in the way.

I feel the loss though. I felt the dip in my personality, my mental functioning, my moods, my boredom. And now looking back I feel the lost time, the need to catch up.

Every now and then I used to take a look at all the books I had, either physically or written down, that I had flagged to read in the future. Sometimes it seemed that I would never have enough time to finish them all - it would give me anxiety when I considered that I may legitimately die before I could complete them. Considering how quickly the list could be added to that will always be the likely future. After a few years of minimal reading I feel that strongly now.

I've made the conscious effort this year to do better. I initially set my goal to 30 (one more than I'd finished last year) and quickly reached it. Then I changed to 60, now 100. I am currently reading my 48th book.

I've adapted over the years. I don't just read physical copies anymore and I've given away my library. I love books but my anxiety regarding clutter, my frequent travel and now my penchant for office work and walks have had me embrace both ebooks and audiobooks. The only books I now keep in my Sydney apartment are non-fiction or battered copies of my absolute favourite books.

I have subscriptions to Audible and Scrib'd, one-click purchase from the Amazon Kindle Store and hundreds of ebooks I've collected over the years. I will never run out of books to read if I live to be 100.

All I want to do, especially now that the weather is turning colder, is to curl up, read and try to make up for the lost time. If its an audiobook, an ebook or a physical book it doesn't matter. But that's all I want to do.

Sam xox