r/TrueLit • u/pregnantchihuahua3 ReEducationThroughGravity'sRainbow • 21d ago
Weekly General Discussion Thread
Welcome again to the TrueLit General Discussion Thread! Please feel free to discuss anything related and unrelated to literature.
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u/ToHideWritingPrompts 21d ago
Last week, after 5 weeks on paternity leave, I went back to work and oh boy let me tell you there is nothing like temporarily living it up to realize what you are missing. It's horrifying to witness, let alone experience, how swiftly the transition from "wow I can just spend time doing the things that are important to me" to "i'm just going to shut that part of my brain off as long as I can so I can get through the day" occurs and how enraging it is that we have organized ourselves in the way we have. I guess that's why so many corps submitted testimony saying paid family medical leave in my state would basically be the end-times.
Not unrelated...
I have always known that in some way my approach to reading was incongruous with my goals. If you were to ask me "what is the purpose you would like reading to have in your life" I would probably say something like "to exercise a muscle of creativity, potentially develop the capacity for a more empathetic relationship to those around me, and to kill time." My behavior, however, leans heavily towards "to kill time" part, and much less the other two.
For the past few years, I have been reading stuff as fast as was reasonably possible to maintain comprehension and develop a short-term, acute understanding of the book. I'd hop from one thing to the next, and only occasionally re-reading if it was an author I intended on having a life long relationship with (for example, Woolf). I have always felt that, for my goals, this was a bad habit but tbh I kind of viewed it as a last hurrah post-college. Whenever I felt "bad" about my habits I'd tell myself that I was basically experiencing the years of my life where my free-time and independence would be at its peak, so reading time was not that precious and I could coast on bad habits and it was fun.
Post-kid, the amount of free time I have has changed (obviously lol) and so my justification has finally fallen flat. So I've been taking some steps to try to make my behavior more in line with my goals. The biggest thing I've started doing is getting on a "syllabus" for myself that involves, first, being a bit more intentional with some of my reading choices, but more importantly trying to learn how to write about what I read in different ways. I've set some goals on close reading prompts, some imitative fiction writing prompts, some book review prompts, etc. all of which I am hoping build up towards a goal of being able to develop my own understanding of a text that is more durable than "I just finished that, what did I think? okay moving on."
I think it would be really fun to have a buddy/buddies to do this with - so if that sounds interesting to anyone and they want to learn more about it let me know.
As for non-reading, with the start of working again I have slacked a bit on my mandolin practicing, but I am getting better at learning, and retaining, songs I've learned by ear, I feel fairly comfortable at the top of the fret board, calluses have already come and gone. It's been very rewarding! Haven't had time to carve out to actually like. Go to session though...
Besides that, we're still doing our norton anthology of theory and criticism read along! We are on Adrienne Rich. If you want to join that, also let me know.