📚📚 Read every day challenge - Fall/Autumn 2021 🍁🍂🦝

[windupbird]

Summary post

A Long-Delayed Reflection Post
Only a month late, but who’s counting

First, I will start with accomplishments!

• With some…bending of the rules () I did keep my streak and read every day!
• I didn’t finish High Speed, but I did read 162.5/228 pages, so…71% of the way there xD I don’t mind that I didn’t finish it, though - despite the name, I think this novel is one to savor, rather than rush through. Once I started reading it, I realized that I wanted to take my time and fully enjoy the book, which sometimes meant setting it aside for a bit when I knew I wasn’t in the mindset to enjoy it. I really have enjoyed finding these characters again <3 I love them just as much as I did 8+ years ago when I first met them through the anime :3 I was going to make myself a goal of finishing the book before the start of the next challenge, but then work exploded sooo I don’t think I will make that goal after all. I’ll come back to it for sure
• Aside from reading High Speed, I also read 685 pages of manga and finished 5 manga volumes (6 if you count the one I started prior to the challenge)
• Overall, I read for a whopping 55 hours over the course of the challenge - not quite as much as I read in the summer challenge, but still 55 hours I wouldn’t have spent reading otherwise
• Bonus: I got to enjoy a lot of really cute things I love our Tanuki Cuteness Brigade - I had so much fun sharing cute things and hearing about even more cute things to enjoy Also, PS, I bought that big fluffy bird plushie - 10/10 would buy again (so round big fluffy ball of birb)

One thing that continues to elude me is actually building a habit without the “threat” of the challenge hanging over my head I have read exactly nothing since the end of the challenge, which is not entirely my own fault (thanks, work, love you ), but I just…can’t help but feel a little annoyed by how readily I let it drop.

Some more thoughts related to that

So, something that made me feel a bit guilty - when the challenge was done, I felt a little…relieved? And I don’t really know how to take that? Like, what am I relieved about?
That I don’t have to read every day? (Why are you like this, me, don’t you like reading? )
That I can “let go” of a routine? (Why are none of the changes I try to make ever sustained/sustainable)
That I don’t have to post every day? (Not that there was even an obligation to do that anyway, but I definitely feel pressure from myself to do that sometimes - I do feel like it keeps me on track, so I feel I should, but I, like…don’t want to be kept on track, sometimes, if that even makes sense. I feel like it also might have helped if I’d made my posts a bit shorter/simpler But if I’m posting I want to…you know, say something. …It’s a complex issue lol)
And maybe it’s none of the above, maybe it’s just life (aka work) overwhelming me like freaking always and making me eager to drop everything I can, but even thinking that doesn’t stop me from being annoyed about how easy it is for me to get overwhelmed by stuff. It happens, like…not infrequently. Where I have to let stuff drop, because something has to give and that thing can’t ever be work. I hate that I feel like I’m the only one at work who has this problem to such a degree.

Aaaanyway…enough on that xD
I’m happy I had the opportunity to run this challenge thread :3 You all made this such a fun experience And it was awesome getting to introduce this challenge to more people ^^