March 26th

I need to deeply rethink my attitude to reading books. I mean, I will not stop reading, that is the only constant thing in my life — as far as can remember I would read, read A LOT. No matter what it was — I had to have books, some for current reading, more for reading in the future. Even in my addiction I still read at least a book a week. And then I stopped…. I stopped reading for almost three months starting in June last year when my drinking started spiraling out of control. I only went back to reading on my second day in therapy facility while in detox and kept going.

I need to decide with myself that if I read a book that becomes uninteresting, when reading becomes a chore — I need to allow myself to put down that book and just give up on reading. I have so many books waiting for me that I don’t have to worry about what I will have to read.

The problem with this approach is that when I drank, I would easily give up on reading books, I would stop reading one, start another, put it down, start yet another one… Not finishing reading books takes me back to time that I want to forget, to that addicted and failing me.

Now, I understand that it’s only in my head. There are things that I’ve been doing during my drinking days that I can continue now without any guilt and without questioning myself. I wasted enough time already — if reading a particular book doesn’t give any pleasure, I will stop and read something different. I don’t need to finish everything, and I won’t feel any guilt about it.