Hi, my name is Jay, and when I first began drafting this email, I had over 200 unread books in my possession. I bought these books with my own money, despite being in debt and not having much disposable income.
Lifestyle change is hard, yo!
It's like I get one unhealthy habit out of the way and the change mainly just clears up my view so I can now see something else I need to change.
When I wrote again about turning my leisure time into something that feels like work, I kept noticing a nagging feeling. An inner voice saying, You've gotta face the book situation next, girlfriend! And so here I am. Facing it. Even though it feels difficult.
I love reading. Always have. Most books I read are ostensibly for leisure, not work. So, reading them should be pure pleasure, right? Well, it's not.
I mean, I enjoy it! I enjoy it enough that I feel guilty right now implying otherwise. I'd feel like I lied if I gave you the impression I don't enjoy it. Because I do! So much! But I also don't enjoy it as much as I could, because I sometimes inject it with The Poison. The Poison and my tendency to impulsively buy books have banded together to make even leisure-time reading feel a bit like work.
How? Great question. I was just gonna tell you.
Step 1: I buy books faster than I can read them.
Step 2: That means that, by the time I read a book, I might've already owned it for weeks or months or years. That means, by the time I read a book, I feel guilty about getting to it "late" and being "behind" on it.
Step 3: I feel anxiety and impulse-buy more books, because apparently buying books is one of my go-to stress-relievers these days.
Step 4: This buying of books causes more anxiety because, one, I can't fucking afford it!, and two, now there are more books piled up that I'm "behind" on.
Step 5: As I read, I enjoy it, but that enjoyment is laced with a hurried tension, because enjoyment is only part of my purpose — I'm also reading with the intention to "catch up" on this book backlog I've created. So, any enjoyment I feel is laced with a fear that I'll never catch up or that I'm not catching up fast enough.
Of course, none of this makes any sense. Compulsive behaviors usually aren't logical. I can't be "behind" on reading books for fun, because there are no prescribed timelines or deadlines. There's no such thing as having fun "late" or "catching up" on fun. Fun is really just a present moment type of thing.
And yet! Because of my big to-be-read pile and, because the years of rushed reading I did in academia are with me in the form of The Poison, that's how I feel.
Which is to say, process vs. outcome battles are happening in the background of my mind as I read. Am I reading to enjoy the process of reading? Or am I reading to finish the book and shrink the TBR pile? Or am I reading to ease the shame I feel about having bought the TBR in the first place, because as long as I read the books, then I can justify having purchased them?
It's a little bit of all of the above. I'm trying to stop this cycle. I first noticed it sometime around when I bought eight cookbooks out of health anxiety and wrote about it. And then, as I sorted through my belongings, I recognized that the number of books I'd bought in recent years and not read yet was completely ridiculous.
I realized I'd basically assigned myself reading homework for the next two or more years of my life. At that point, I got rid of probably 50 to 100 books.
After beginning this email, I forced myself to go through my books once again and Konmari the hell out of them. I held each unread book I own, one-by-one, asking myself if I felt excited enough about it that I'd prioritize reading it within the next six months. Anything that I didn't want to read within the next six months had to go. I got rid of a whole bunch of books this way. It was hard! Sunk costs, regret, shame — all that. But I'm glad I did, because I know I’m moving closer to being able to read books leisurely without all this weird, unnecessary stress woven into the process. Meaning, I’m closer to reading without a huge TBR pile shadowing over me.
As of this week, I have 75 unread books left, a few of which I'm currently reading.
I rarely make New Year's Resolutions. Don't really believe in them. But for 2024, I'm making some.
The first is I won’t buy a single new book until I've read every book I own.
The second is I won’t buy a book unless I’ve already read it and want to reread it.
This will be hard. But I know it's important, because I want my reading practice to feel light and free. And even though buying books isn't the root of my financial issues, it's one piece of the pie, and I want my finances to also feel light and free.
I know reading is very different from art-making, but I see parallels between my approaches to both. I chased some outdated creative dreams in the past, because I felt like I should follow through on what I once wanted to do. And similarly, my reading often feels like chasing a past dream. I enjoy each book I read, but, because I'm reading each book months or years after I originally wanted to, I don't enjoy it as thoroughly as I would've if I'd read it when I felt excited enough about it to buy it.
At the crux of this is a need to accept that I almost always want to do more than I actually have time for, in all realms. At the crux of this is a need to accept that, as a result, I must make difficult decisions and prioritize how to spend my time, instead of placing unrealistic expectations on myself — even on my leisure time! — and putting myself into a situation in which I always feeling a tiny bit stressed and “behind.”
For a few months this year, after I wrote about the aspirational cookbook buying, I forced myself to face my book buying habits. I kept ordering books even though I didn't want to, which made me feel out of control. I developed a pattern that I know is strange: order books from Amazon, then a week or so after they arrive, after the excitement wears off and the guilt sets in, return them (unread) at the UPS store.
(I hate many things about Amazon, but will say thank goodness for their free return policy. And I don't feel like delving into the evils of Amazon today, but disengaging from that company is another incentive for me to get my act together in this area.)
I can't continue impulsively buying books, then trudging to UPS to return them. That's a step above buying them and keeping them, but it's unsustainable. Which is why my third New Year's resolution is, Stop buying things from Amazon.
I'm pretty ashamed to admit that I've been buying books from Amazon. I know I'm the one doing it, but I look at the behavior and wonder, how did this happen? To borrow Tiktok parlance, I've been a public library girly my whole life!
I had also been a boycott Amazon girly for many years. But when the pandemic began in 2020, I didn't feel safe going to the library anymore. I justified buying from Amazon, because so many other options felt limited, and I also feared my income could dry up any minute. But that began almost four years ago.
The buck stops here!!!
If I'm honest, I don't fully understand why I buy books in the first place. I'm not a collector. Most often, I read a book once then give it away. There is clearly some impulsive or compulsive part of me activated when I buy books.
I don't know what this impulsive/compulsive part of me thinks will happen if I stop buying books, because this part doesn't think, it just desires. This part of me is an all-consuming vacuum of want that, for whatever reason (maybe because I recently took away its other vices, one by one?), is currently trying to fulfill itself by buying books. I know book-buying is definitely not a worst-case scenario as far as unhealthy attempts to fulfill all-consuming wants go, but it's a habit I'd like to drop nonetheless.
Recently, I learned of Noa Goffer, a Tel Aviv artist who draws the things she wants to buy instead of buying them. (I later learned she is not the first artist to do a project like this — painter Sarah Lazarovic did something similar several years earlier).
Goffer said this about her project: "The Wishlist is somewhat of a personal diary or an imaginary wallet, depicting my relentless desire for accumulating 'stuff,' which serves as a soothing strategy or therapy to ease my materialistic urges."
She also said: "It’s interesting and perhaps a little touching to understand how much of what we want to have is a way to define and distinguish ourselves from one another. And eventually to realize we’re all the same, we all have wishes and weaknesses as part of the materialistic world."
How cool, right???
I don't know that I want to draw the books I want to buy, necessarily, but I like the idea of channeling an urge to accumulate into a form of expression.
Maybe I will journal about the books I desire, by addressing certain questions whenever my book shopping urge arises: What do I hope this book will add to my life? Can I get that thing anywhere else? How soon do I think I'll realistically have time to read this book, given all the other unread books I own? If I don't buy this book today, what will I feel I've lost out on?
Whether it's journaling or something else, I need to find a new ritual, a new way of contending with this book-buying urge that doesn't involve spending money. Or, as Goffer put it, I need a soothing strategy or therapy to ease my materialistic urges.
I can get SO compulsive about my book buying/storing/reading habits, if that hasn't already become very clear to you by now! So I really appreciated this post because I also need to set limits around myself in 2024 to change up some of my feelings of "giving myself homework," etc.