Turn To Reading
Since completeing my Writing Challenge in November and while working through the challenging work schedule I have had over the past four weeks, I have to some degree moved from writing so much to the task of reading.
It was while doing some research on just how to improve your writing abilities that I found the suggestion, that a person who writes well, is well read. Which really did get my thinking about reading. My relationship with reading books has been somewhat off and on.
At times I have chosen to read numerous different books, I have read most of the books written by Matthew Rielly, as well as all by Dan Brown. There are also a number of other titles which I have reda from time to time. However reading has never been consistent for me, at times I will read books back to back for a few months, at other times If I read but 10 pages in 2 or 3 months it is an effort.
The greatest factor involved with this is in fact the internet. At times I will spend a great deal of time browsing the internet, reading articles and posts, or playing games. However while the majority of this time is still reading what if anything I gain from this I am unsure. Of course my time spent reading online at the time seems to me to be topics of importance, however in the long term if they are, I do not know.
While I do not intend to ignore writing entirely at the moment, I want to spend the free time that I have more evening between reading and writing. In the last month this has meant more reading, more so due to a much less flexible schedule, and less time available to devote to that of writing. I feel I write best when I am not pressured by minimal time.
So where exactly am I going with this. Well to be honest I am heading to the point that I will be reading more. Over the nesxt few months and even throughout the whole of the year I want to get into a habit of reading a novel at least for some time every day. I would like to balance it a little more, as for the most part my reading is either all or nothing.
This is best highlighted through my reading today. I read the entire second half a a book, which I completed reading just a short while ago. Which I spent probaly 5 or 6 hours or more reading today. While yesterday I may have read 10 pages and spent less then 30 minutes in doing so.
My Reading Future
So really looking at this in the long term there are two things that I would like to achieve. I don’t really have any specific time frame for achieving these goals, but the fact of the matter is that if I achieve goal #1 in time Goal #2 will be achieved by default.
Goal #1 – Create a consistent habit of reading for 1 (one) hour per day. This does not need to be in a single time slot, I may read for 30 minutes in the morning or 30 minutes before bed, and 30 minutes while on my break at work. I also plan to cap my time reading each day to no more than 2 (two) hours. This is something I feel I need to do after spending 6 or 7 hours reading today and getting nothing else done.
Goal #2 – Read 100 Novels. This is really just an arbitary goal, because obviously I plan to continue reading after I reach this goal, however it is nice to have a number to report back progress for the time being. There are also no minimum number of pages for a book or any other requirements on this goal.
Other Notes
As mentioned in Goal one the whole point is to build consistency. I want to be able to make this a consistent habit of mine rather then something that catches my attention for short bursts every few months. Also by imposing the time limit each day it gives me time in the day to absorb what I have read in smaller chunks. I decided to go with a timeframe, and not a number of pages because the time it can take for reading a set number of pages can vary grealy from book to book.
I will also maintain a record of my reading list on a seperate page which I will create in the next week or so, however I will provide a list of the current books I have read in the past month which will be included below. Along with the current books I am looking at reading in the next couple of weeks.
Book List
Completed December 2011
1. Her Majesty The King – Patricia L. O’Neill
2. The Soulkeepers – G.P. Ching
3. Weaving Destiny – G.P. Ching
4. Child of the Mist (These Highland Hills, Book 1) – Katheleen Morgan
Completed January 2012
5. Dark Earth – Jason Halstead
Future Reading
6. The Awakened: Book 1 – Jason Tesar
7. The Last Call – George Wier
8. Parallel Worlds – Heather Macauley Noell, Andrew Macauley
9. The Books of Deacon – Joseph Lallo
10. Marked (Sould Gaurdians, Book 1) – Kim Richardson
I am still to decide on the rest of the books, however I will likely be looking for books to add to the list in advance of getting to the number on the list I am up to. I may also move around the future reading a little depending on my mood and if I happen to come across an author that I like or a series I want to read in order after reading the first one.
While I am happy to take suggestions on books to read, I cannot specify any specific genre I like. I will attempt to read and finish just about any book at the moment in trying to seek the genre I like best, however no promises. Additionally the best I can offer is a listing of the title and author and potentially a link to Amazon, on the title if I have time, I do not plan or intend to do book reviews, and where easy to source I will seek to add a link to the author’s website on their name.
Less Time Online = Less Need To Be Online
Over the past year the travel that I have been doing there is a funny thing that I have found. It is to a large degree to do with the amount of time that I spend online and how traveling affects this.
For the most part when I travel, especially outside Australia my ability to access the internet generally decreases drastically. This happens due to two big changes in the way life runs for me when I am travelling. The first is a general lesser amount of time available, while the second is much more limited access to internet.
On the first area I generally have less time available to be online. When I am at home, I will generally spend two to three hours online a day, working on my blogs, checking out topics of interest, or just doing whatever. When I am travelling this time I find can be used to a much better purpose such as seeing the town, or area that I am travelling in. I mean what is the point in getting out and travelling if you are not going to use that time to your advantage to see the area.
The second area is the one which probably has the greater impact directly on the amount of time that I spend online. When travelling it just is not as easy to get access to the internet. Of course this depends on the country that you are visiting, but in general hotels charge for internet access, however free access is more widely available in cafe’s and such. But the thing is, you can really only stand sitting in a Starbucks, or McDonalds for so long.
The result which all of this has is ultimately when I arrive home, I struggle to figure out just what it was that I do all day on the internet when I am at home. Travelling has ultimately changed my priorities to some degree, however there is still work to do in this area though.
The problem I still face is that when I am at home I still gravitate towards being on my computer and trying to figure what I need or maybe it is what I want to do on the internet. Often this will result in me sitting down at the computer browsing to one or two websites and then sitting there and wondering what else I would spend all this time online doing.
I have found that to a large degree the number one thing that I do while on the computer or online now, is writing. This has definetly a change over the past month, with the writing challenge in November. Which is really a big change from six months ago when I would spend a lot of time playing a range of different games online. The result over the past six months is a rather big decrease in online games and a much better focus on writing and other more productive activities.
Ultimately this has taken a lot of work to start equalising things out between excessive time online and other things. However this is getting a lot better, after my first trip this year I found it very difficul to transition back into writing, I spent a lot time on other wastful activities. Which resulted in some detrimental results for my blog at www.joelbrown.com.au. However after the second trip things transitioned much more smoothly. I continued the writing through the end of my trip and was able to pick up writing rather than the wasteful activities right away on my return home.
The best advantage that I have found in the past few days after returning home from two weeks for work in New Zealand was that I know I don’t need to go looking for a long list of sites I need to visit every day. I know the few sites I like to keep up to date on and that is that. Which now has led to me spending some time reading each day rather then just sitting at the computer with no real aim on what to achieve.
