Jocelyn (The Reading World)

Hi guys, you might have noticed that I've been a little...dormant for the last few months, and I thought I'd talk about it. You might have already read my post from October: http://jocelyn.booklikes.com/post/570515/confession-or-maybe-i-m-telling-you-what-you-ve-already-noticed

So, the general gist: I've lost interest in reading and interacting online for...oh, I don't know, about five or six months. I haven't picked up a new book in months, only going back to safely reread some of my old favorites. I've barely written anything. I've even felt weirdly stressed out in English class in school, which is strange for me. For a long, long time, this made me panic. I love to read and the idea that it just isn't for me anymore is just...well, kind of unthinkable. I never thought that in all my years as a reader, I'd come to doubt myself, of all things.

Let me be clear, this is totally unrelated to the censorship debacle on Goodreads; it's purely a personal thing. I don't know why, but I've been feeling hugely dissatisfied with myself lately and a lot of days, I simply feel lost, for lack of a better word. Maybe the reason why this has been dragging out so frustratingly long is because I don't want to accept it. I dislike complaining this much, but the truth is that I feel extremely unproductive, inactive, and useless. I like to be constantly engaged for the most part and when I'm not, it's easy for me to think something's wrong. The first few months of this, I pushed myself so hard I burned out. Reading has sadly become an obligation for me rather than a way to genuinely engage myself intellectually. I read because I had to, because it was necessary to convince myself that I was still a reader just like I was before.

But anyway, right now I think I have accepted it. I took a break--a lot longer than I thought would be necessary. So what I want to say is, especially to those of you who have been wondering what's going on, I think I need a little longer to...recuperate? Recover? Rest? (Sorry, my mind is rather scattered at the moment). I think that with the passage of time, the desire to read again will come back naturally if I let that happen on its own. And eventually, hopefully, I'll be back to normal again, and chatting as busily as before with the rest of you.

I hope I don't come across as too upset in this post--I wrote this mainly because I thought everyone was owed something of an explanation why I disappeared and it felt disloyal not to.

Anyway, I'm glad that this place--and Goodreads--makes me feel open enough to talk about it honestly. The same can hardly be said for anywhere else.