In the past couple of years, I've been finding myself where you often find the things you lose: where you last left them. I can’t pinpoint the exact moment I began to love reading, but I have a pretty good suspicion about the why. As a kid, I was afraid of people. Traces of shyness still exist within me, moments when my introversion demands that I recharge away from persistent conversation. When I was younger, I had it way worse. I’d hide behind my mom’s legs, afraid of almost everyone. But books were not a risk; they were not a threat.
I used books to burrow deeper into other worlds, away from my own. In a way, they reflected who I was at that time— worlds contained within the confines of a page like my thoughts often nestled into my mind, out of reach from anyone not interested enough to pry. Stories showed me how others lived, coaxing emotions from me and showing me how to feel before turning me back around. Each time I reemerged with a new clue to apply to my own world, helping me interpret the reality that became more known to me.
I stopped reading as much as I got older. Maybe it’s the inevitable byproduct of choosing what you love to be your livelihood or maybe it’s just a matter of growing up, but I just couldn’t hit my reading goals as an adult. That arbitrary number I’d set for myself at the start of each year became a sort of litmus test—the closer I got to it, the happier I felt, though it had more to do with the sense of productivity that came with finishing another book. I would start the year strong, blazing ahead in January and February. Then, I’d usually drop off by March, unable to explain the way my whole body seemed to buzz with impatience when I tried to force it to focus on a string of words for too long.
In March 2020, I was living abroad and went into quarantine with the rest of the world. In April of that same year, I launched my editing business, and in July, I moved across the world back to my home country.
Since then, I’ve been busy: building my business, applying to and starting jobs, and trying to keep my emotions afloat through a steady diet of Facetime calls and Instagram reels. I’d try to read, but when I did, my eyes would hastily scan the page, never quite landing. I couldn’t settle in.
The guilt did, though. Its ever-present voice reminded me that reading—unless I was marking up words in Microsoft Word or Google Docs for a client—wasn't productive. I told myself that if I was to be one thing during the pandemic, it was to be productive. I sat my butt at the desk, tracked my hours, and cranked out hour after hour of work, all to wear the proverbial patch of honor so that no one would call me lazy, least of all myself.
In reality, productivity has been the poison to my creativity. My version of it requires that I have an answer and a reason for every action I take. Like a chess player, I have to think a few moves ahead, and if I don’t see a finished product at the end of all my effort, I bail before wasting more time. The problem is that neither reading nor writing have guaranteed outcomes. What can reading a novel do for me, and what guarantee do I have that an essay will receive publication? Seeing none, I have two choices: retreat to another, safer pursuit or apply pressure to the situation until it produces my desired outcome.
My inner conscience becomes a supervisor looming over me and demanding results before I’ve even begun. I managed to apply certain tactics to keep it at bay. I know that, on its face, reading doesn’t produce many results beyond joy and fulfillment and intellectual stimulation (as if those mean nothing). Those used to be reason enough, but when I identified reading as a catalyst to my writing, I had a way to incorporate it into my hustle. I started to add reading to my calendar, marking it as a task that I’d have to cross off by the end of the day. These mental gymnastics allowed me to reconcile my creative self with the side of my perfectionism.
My therapist suggested I take it a step further. I’d told her about my mental trick, but she said, “I think you should label it as self-care.” She wanted me to call it what it really was, integrating it into my schedule so I’d become more comfortable with the optics of self-care taking a spot in my day. Up until that point, I'd been meticulous in my record-keeping. I accounted for every bathroom break and counted trips to the washer and dryer as “housework” to boost my ego. But after my talk, I noticed my hesitation when I sat down to write in my journal. I decided to call that time writing but knowing that I didn’t have any intentions about what I would write, the label felt misleading. Still, I stuck with it, beginning with the words that led me here.
I realized in my drive to measure every part of my day to prove my productivity, I’d truncated parts of my life into unnecessary categories. Many writers will say that they write at all hours of the day, even when their pen isn’t moving across the page. The idea resonates with me—when I walk or dance, or read or watch, I stumble onto my stories in ways that feel serendipitous yet destined. Certainly much more so than when I berate myself for failing to finish another short story or round off another essay. It was a mercy to realize that I am not God. I do not create ex nihilo but rather spin from the threads that stretch around me. I cannot cut myself off from these sources of inspiration and still hope to produce.
Halfway into another year of this lesson, I’m still learning to slow down, and I’ve made reading a requirement in ways that bring joy while still scratching the itch for achievement. But I’ve also allowed myself to view it as a form of self-care, and I find that whatever I label it, joy comes in my ability to be kind to myself. I often mourn the loss of my creative self—the self I was as a child and teenager, unhindered by the burden of self-consciousness. That version of myself read insatiably and felt not an ounce of guilt for it, intuiting how much it contributed to my survival while I navigated an unsteady childhood. That connection is more apparent to me now, during another era marked by chaos and uncertainty.
Sure, I’m still tricking myself into making reading a requirement; I can’t always sink into it spontaneously like I used to, but I’m okay with the compromise. Somewhere between perfectionism and creativity, I’m making space for something I love in the only way I know how to right now. This year, I’ve read more than I ever have before, and as I do, I notice the change: I feel light, hopeful, and a little more myself again. But of course, I do. I’m finding myself where you often find the things you lose: where you last left them.
Elisabeth Ivey writes literary non-fiction and young adult fiction. She has contributed to The Odyssey and Messiah College’s The Swinging Bridge, and she has presented research on representation in youth literature at the PA NAME and IMAGINE Social Good conferences.
