As I write this, I'm standing on line at the pharmacy. I'm writing with my thumbs. This is what they call edge time. I'm using it to go onto Goodreads and see what some of the folks in my PLN are reading. I also check in on two Voxer chat groups where lots of great titles are always mentioned, titles of books that I'd love, or books that my family members would love, or books that my students would love. I toggle between the chats and my library account and my Overdrive app, reserving titles or adding them to my wish list. As a result of these practices, I've gotten better at suggesting better books for my family members and finding better books for myself, and I have fewer compunctions about abandoning the wrong ones earlier. (Kind of like breaking it off with the wrong guy after one bad date instead of three or four... years. But I digress...)
The benefits are clear -- I'm reading more books now than I ever have. Longer books, challenging books, books that make me go "hmmmm." And it's quite exhilarating, all of this book love. Until it gets a little exhausting. Until the FOMOOB hits: Fear of Missing Out on Books.
I've got a bad case of FOMOOB, which has resulted in a digital read-next list of hundreds of books. Logically, if I keep chronicling my read-next titles at the same rate as I currently do, I'll never actually read all of the books I'm putting on my list.
What if the perfect book is out there somewhere and I never find it? What if I add it to my read-nexts and forget and never end up reading it? What if it never gets read? Sacrilege!
When I'm hit with a high intensity FOMOOB wave, I have to remind myself that the act of reading itself engenders a feeling in total opposition to FOMO. Populating my read-next list is not reading. Reading actually creates JOMO, or Joy of Missing Out. And whatever the book may be in my hands, the JOMO will always be there. So now I need to work on being mindful when the FOMOOB starts to creep its way in.
It's not a race, it's my reading life. No one's going to give me a sticker and a lollipop for reading 25 books in 10 weeks, or furrow a brow when I admit to not having read any books by that author (though I've heard her work is amazing!). To paraphrase Brene Brown in her TED Talk "Listening to Shame," most of the negative messages we get are those we say to ourselves. It's great to be excited about reading good books, and to then nurture the reading life with patience and managed expectations. I'm never going to read every book ever written, but those I do read will also read me. This is another message my students need to see lived out. If not, they might think that reading is about breadth and not depth, about flagellation and not reflection. So it's my job to kick up the mojo and ignite the JOMO!
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