Feeling Like a Bad Reader

Hey guys! Today I’m going to be talking about some of my personal struggles with being a slower reader. Hopefully some of you will be able to relate.

Before I start, though, let me just say that whether you’re a fast reader or a slow one or a medium one, it doesn’t matter, as long as you’re reading—and even more importantly, enjoying the time you spend reading. There are so many posts out there talking about how to read faster, and obviously those are super helpful. Ultimately, though, reading is supposed to be something you do for fun, so as long as you’re happy with your reading pace, there’s no point in making yourself miserable by forcing yourself to read faster.

That was my little positivity rant for the day. Let’s start the actual post now, shall we?

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In case you all didn’t know, I am a pretty slow reader—or maybe the more accurate description is “easily distracted reader”. For example, since the beginning of this year, I have only read about one and a half books…. I know.

Honestly, that number is very small even for me, and there are a lot of other factors going into my lack of reading so far this year (including a fair amount of traveling—more on that soon), but even during a normal month, I can generally only manage about 4-6 books. That’s a pretty respectable amount, actually, but the thing is that I know I could read more if I just put a little more effort into it.

When I have the motivation and the time to read, I can easily read most books in a day or less. But oftentimes, when I have to time to read, I end up doing something like watching YouTube or scrolling through social media instead of reading. And it’s not because I don’t want to read—I love reading. I love the feeling of losing myself in a book and allowing myself to be somewhere else for a little while. I love getting to know the characters, and I love all the twists and turns of a well-written book.

I will often find myself thinking about wanting to read or thinking about the book that I’m currently reading… and then not doing anything about it, just continuing to do whatever time-wasting thing I was doing. I don’t know why I do it, but I do it with such regularity that it makes me think that maybe I’m not a “real” reader, which honestly doesn’t even make sense. A “real” reader is someone who reads, and who likes to read, which is what I am.

I don’t know. This kind of thing is hard to describe, but it’s something that happens to me a lot, and not just when it comes to reading, though that is the focus of this particular post. It also happens to me with writing, both book-writing and writing for this blog, and with pretty much anything else in my life that I like doing, but is not strictly required for some reason or another.

It’s kind of like being in a perpetual reading slump, and I hate it.

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Okay, I think that’s enough of that for today. Let me know down in the comments, have you ever experienced something like this? Do you have any advice to help me out? Do you think I’m a bad reader? I want to hear all your thoughts!

Thanks for reading, guys, and I’m sorry I didn’t have a post last week. I’ll hopefully see you next week with a new one!

-Ariel