“Every day, it gets a little easier. But you’ve got to do it every day. That’s the hard part.”

[breakinglight11]

I have written, again and again, over the last decade or so, about how much trouble I’ve had reading books. Not reading in general, since I’m basically reading something constantly, but anything longform has been a brutal struggle to stay focused on. It’s been a source of serious frustration and even shame that I had become the sort of person who didn’t read books, when my whole life is based on the significance of literature.

I’d made a few attempts in recent years to fix this. Usually by just trying to bull my way through it. I’d pick up a book here and there and force myself to finish it. Occasionally I’d build up a bit of momentum, and I’d think I was on my way back to making book-reading a habit again, like when I went through a good chunk of P.G. Wodehouse, all the way back in 2014. But it’s never stuck, and I’ve consistently only read maybe two new books a year since I graduated college.

But I have been struggling with depression lately, which led to more bad habits developing. The need for some significant change in my daily life had become urgently apparent. I needed to put some better habits in place in hopes that it might help me feel better.

I stumbled across a Youtube video that said that anything you wanted to do but were having trouble making yourself do, you should set a ridiculously low bar for such that you can regularly accomplish it without too much difficulty. Like, exercising or practicing the piano for ten minutes a day. You will almost always have time for such a short session, and it will allow you to do at least something every day. It makes it a habit, and helps make it easier to do.

I’ve always done well with structure. So I wrote it into my to do list to read a book just for ten minutes, every day. And I’ve been doing it. Since early November, I’ve been doing it, almost every day.

It’s not been easy. Sometimes it’s hard even to focus for just those ten minutes. Sometimes I have to read the same passage two or three times before my brain absorbs it, rather than wandering off in a different direction. But I’ve stuck with it. And sometimes— maybe even as much as half the time —I am able and interested enough to keep reading after the timer is up.

I’m reading pretty slowly, especially given how fast I can read when I actually somehow manage to dig up the engagement. But I’m reading. I’ve finished five books using this system already. Bernard Cornwell’s The Winter King, recommended by Mark as inspiration for my own novel. Patricia Mountbatten’s Daughter of Empire. Jennifer Cocks and Heather Morgan’s The Royal We. Franny Billingsley’s Chime, on Charlotte’s recommendation. And Pat Baker’s The Silence of the Girls, a gift from a lovely student after our Iliad unit. More books in the last two months than in the previous two years. I’ve just started Claire Harman’s Murder by the Book, a birthday gift from my brother which sounded interesting but I couldn’t manage to work up the focus for.

I’d been kind of sad lately, thinking of how long it’s been since I actually managed to change something in my life that was bothering me. This has been a problem for me for like ten years now. If I can keep this up, I might actually have fixed this for the better. This thing which has burdened me for a decade.

One of my all time favorite moments in Bojack Horseman is when the baboon who was jogging through this neighborhood in season 2 tells him, “Every day, it gets a little easier. But you’ve got to do it every day. That’s the hard part.” I always found that really meaningful, and absolutely, achingly true. 

I’m not good at being hopeful. But this progress truly, genuinely gives me hope.