Skip to main content

serpent & dove and all-or-nothing thinking

So I work at a library, and sometimes if the day is slow, which is most days, I’ll check out an ebook to read at my computer while I’m on desk duty. The other day, I noticed that Shelby Mahurin’s Serpent & Dove had expired. Which was weird, because I’d never finished it—in fact, I think I only got about a third of the way through it. 

I don’t just not finish books. I can think of only two instances in my entire life where I deliberately chose to not finish a book (maybe I should talk about those sometime, because yikes they were bad). If I get too busy for a book I’m in the middle of, I might set it aside, assuring myself that I’ll get around to it one day. But I don’t just not finish books.

But you know what else I don’t do? Pick up those half-read books again. I mean, sometimes I do. If I really am just way too busy for a novel but I was genuinely enjoying it, then yeah, I’ll probably pick it up again. Reading is pretty high on my priority list, though; it’s rare that I truly can’t make the time for it. But if what I’m reading isn’t holding my interest, I don’t like to intentionally put it away for good—it feels like admitting defeat, somehow. So I put it back on my to-read list and tell myself I’ll read it someday.

The length of my to-read list is excessive, to put it mildly.

Clearly, I really struggle with an all-or-nothing mentality. If it were only applied to the books on my shelf, I might accept it as an odd personality quirk, but unfortunately it seems to permeate pretty much every area of my life. Lately I’ve been especially aware of it invading my ability to enjoy hobbies. Yes, hobbies—those things people do purely for fun. If I put aside a cross stitch project I’d been working at diligently, simply because I’m not in the mood for cross stitching, then I probably won’t ever pick it back up. When the cross stitching mood strikes again, I’ll look at that old project and be so overwhelmed with shame at not finishing it, that I start a completely new one rather than deal with it.

If I start a blog because I have an overwhelming urge to fling bits of my overthinking mind into the void of the internet, and then don’t experience that urge for a couple of weeks, what am I supposed to do when the urge comes back? I abandoned it; can I really just go back to it?

Yes. Obviously. What the hell? That’s not even a real question.

It’s probably ridiculous that I even have to have these kinds of conversations with myself. But I’ve spent my whole life feeling like my worth lies in what I do, and in how I do it, even in things don’t really matter; that doesn’t just go away the moment I acknowledge the problem. If years of therapy have taught me anything, though, it’s that it helps to start with something small, something that’s challenging but still manageable.

So I think I’ll start here, with how I spend my free time. If something sounds enjoyable, I’ll do it. If it doesn’t, I won’t. If I come back to it, cool, and if I don’t, that’s cool too! Life is too short to stress about the right way to have fun, even for not-so-secret perfectionists like me.

Serpent & Dove wasn’t fun. I was excited going into to it, because “arranged marriage” and all variations of it is my absolute favorite romance trope. But then protagonist girl was being framed as funny and clever but she just wasn’t, and I understood where protagonist guy was coming from but that didn’t mean he wasn’t kind of annoying, and no amount of wanting to like this book could make me like it.

So I refuse to finish it. And that actually feels pretty good.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

the fellowship of the ring: chapter two, “the shadow of the past”

Chapter Two eases us into the wider world of Middle-earth. As the title would suggest, it expands on the theme of history established in the prologue, and we see how the dark happenings in Frodo’s time were set into motion long ago. We at last have answers to some of the questions we’ve had about the Ring, and a clear reason to leave the Shire. Yes, this chapter is mostly an exposition dump, but it manages to pick up the story’s momentum rather than slow it down.  Crucially, this chapter serves as our first real introduction to Frodo and Sam. There’s a clear difference in class between them which Tolkien emphasizes in their manner of speaking, and thus far nothing about the framing of their master/servant relationship suggests we’re meant to be critical of the hobbits’ social structure. But the groundwork has been laid to show that they are fundamentally equals, and each has had a chance to display admirable qualities.  Frodo is naturally frightened by everything he learns her...
Post a Comment
Read more

the fellowship of the ring: chapter three, “three is company”

We are getting our first taste of the Road. Tolkien often capitalizes this word when he’s referring to the idea of a road as a path one takes on a journey as opposed to a literal road, or at least that’s how I interpret it. And I think this distinction is thematically important in a quest story, especially one where the journey the characters must go on is both physical and intrapersonal. Though the hobbits haven’t yet left the borders of the Shire, Tolkien continues to provide a good forward momentum through these pages by escalating the sense of danger. The encounters with the mysterious Black Riders are tense, especially as their appearances always prompt Frodo’s struggle with a temptation to put on the Ring. The Shire has already proven unsafe, and of course only more peril lies ahead. The appearance of Gildor and elves just in time to frighten off a Black Rider is an early example of things suddenly going right for our heroes, seemingly by chance. The Hobbit was full of such inst...
Post a Comment
Read more

the fellowship of the ring: chapter one, “a long-expected party”

The title of the opening chapter harkens back to The Hobbit ’s “An Unexpected Party.” Just like that story, this one eases us into the fantasy setting by beginning in Hobbiton in the Shire, a region which, from its landscape to its inhabitants, resembles an idealized English countryside. Spending time here also helps us feel for Frodo later when he must leave it behind in order to keep it safe, and strengthens our desire to see his safe return. The Shire becomes home for us just as it is for Frodo. This chapter compells us to keep reading by posing very troubling questions about the nature of the ring. For readers of The Hobbit especially, Bilbo’s seeming addiction to this piece of jewelry is jarring, particularly when his defensiveness about it leads to him making some rather nasty accusations against Gandalf, one of his dearest friends. It’s a genuine relief when it’s out of his possession and he instantly becomes much more himself. Now, though, the ring has been left to Frodo, and ...
Post a Comment
Read more