Musing Monday asks you to choose one of the following prompts to answer each week…

I’m currently reading…
Up next I think I’ll read…
I bought the following book(s) in the past week…
I’m super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…
I’m really upset by (book/author/bookish-news)…
I can’t wait to get a copy of…
I wish I could read ___, but…

Random Question: How has your reading changed in the last 10 years?

Well, this is a very loaded question because 10 years is a long time and even with my “mind palace” I can’t draw it all up sometimes. Pardon the starting of this with a ramble, I will blame it on my lack of sleep lately (yay insomnia). I have always been a reader. You can ask my Mom especially in the summer when we went once a week to the library I loved checking out piles and piles of books. I would get everything from comics like Calvin and Hobbes or Garfield (reminds me, I need to do a read of them again soon) to big thick books like Trinity by Leon Uris. As I got older I read less as life became life, I also felt a bit un-tethered as to what I wanted to read for a long time.

Once I was diagnosed with Lymphoma and was not able to do as much activity wise as I wanted to I started reading a lot again. I expanded my genre’s and was happy to devour just about anything at all. I was reading so many books my friends and family razzed me a little bit about it, especially when I started this very blog. I wanted to keep track of how many books I was reading and doing reviews on my own blog seemed a good way to go about it. 2009 this blog started with a cheesy theme on blogspot. I eventually updated theme’s, then bought a domain and lastly made the migration to hosting my own site and using the WordPress plugin. A choice I will never regret.

Then I started to crochet and had to deal with a cross country move due to personal life problems. My reading has suffered some since then. I am still reading don’t get me wrong and as you can see I still do reviews, but not as much as I used to. I am struggling to find the balance between work, crochet, reading and blogging. I am sure I will find the right balance eventually, or I will swing back into a cycle of devouring book after book. Crochet has been the dominating thing in my life for the last several years. I don’t write to pen pals as much as I used to, I haven’t found new ones to replace ones that just stopped writing and I have not mastered the ability to read a hard copy book while crocheting. I really do hope in the future to strike a better balance between things. I miss reading as much as I used to but crochet has truly turned into my Zen place. I have often told people that to me crochet is like meditation is to other people, and with high stress levels the last few years I need it. I am very hard on myself when I don’t meet reading or review goals, but I am working on that.

So there you have a very long muse about my reading habits over the last 10 years. They have been up and they have been down and they have been all around. However, I always read. Reading is a passion and even if I am in a down period I still read because I love it. I enjoy living the many lives you can while reading a good book. I feel as long as I still enjoy it and manage some time for reading I am okay. The balance will eventually come.

I hope everyone enjoyed my little bit of rambling this Musing Monday.