First, a personal note.? I am doing much better, well enough to ride my bike to the vanpool today.? C is getting better also, albeit more slowly.? The sun (o the sun!) is helping both of us.
After bookmarking/blogging/whatever the 5th article in two days that I’d tagged as “to-read” because I just don’t have the brainspace or time for it now, it occurred to me that I have an input problem.
The same thought comes to me when I get an email from the library saying my hold is ready, and I’ve hardly even cracked the last book I picked up.
You know that saying about “eyes are bigger than the stomach”?? I think I’m that way with words, because when I get to the library, I almost always end up grabbing 2 or 3 more books in addition to the hold.? Hey, they look interesting.
Several things happen as a result:
- I don’t read all of the things I really want to.
- I forget stuff that I’ve read, because I read it too quickly.? (With the internets, this is less of a problem, as I can generally find it later if I need to reference something in particular.)
- I work less on my own projects, be they web sites or stories, or sometimes, embarassingly enough, stuff around the house.
I don’t know what to do about it.? Or even what to think…it’s amazing that all this good stuff is out there.
I’ve learned more in the last couple of years than I did in most of the decade before that.? I’ve met people, thought big thoughts, connected incredibly disparate books, essays & whatnot in ways that engage my mind.? Plus there’s all that good practical education.
Which doesn’t make me feel any less as though I were drowning in words.
Funny thing for a hyperlexic to say, ain’t it?
I remember a time when there weren’t enough words around. As a kid I used to run out of stuff of my own to read, so I would read my mom’s Redbook and Ladies Home Journal magazines. I would read my dad’s Wall Street Journal and Business Week and Forbes. I lived (and again live) a block from the library. In high school I read every single book they had about World War II and about broadcasting.
Hard to believe in this age of the always-on never-ending firehose we call the Internet….
I have to say I have the same problem. For me I have a ton of book which I have picked up and own that becuase of the reading I had to do for school plus papers to write plus working at one point 20+ hours a week I had no time to read what I wanted yet I would still get books (libary sales, church sales and give aways plus christmas and birthday) Now that I have the time to read them all I am finding all these new books to read from the library or ones you tell me how great they are that I have found tons of this to read and not enough hours in the day (and this is with no job to go to) BUT I think that might be a good thing like the saing “May all your wishes be granted but one, So you will always have some thing to hope/work for”
OMG. That brings back some memories! Grandma subscribed to tons of mags, which always found a 2nd home at our house. Mmmmmmm…Omni…..
And our library was a half-dozen blocks away. The thing that pointed me towards my first job, as page in the children’s section, was that I read the 10 books for the summer club in a week when I was 13.
The change in the sheer availability of words…must be somewhat like living during the reformation.