I want everything but never “now.” I never think the current version of myself deserves it. Which is odd, because past me deserves the world, and future me already has it. Somehow, I have built a home in the middle, and that is where I remain. Virginia Woolf once wrote, “You cannot find peace by avoiding life,” and I have spent much of my life accidentally trying to prove her wrong.
I treat the present as if it were just a waiting room. For someone who overthinks in the name of clarity, it is ironic how much logic slips through the cracks. Overthinking has never solved the problems it created.
Reading became a tool to calm my mind as a child. Fears of death, superstitions, and the certainty that God was always watching set me up for a threshold I am still working on. I could not, however, worry about keeping my parents alive with my thoughts or maintaining world peace by repeating an action that did not feel quite perfect, all while reading Shortcake Strawberry’s Adventures.
My parents caught on, and reading became my obsession. Like all obsessions, it lacked balance.
As a teenager, it grew into collecting. I thought about reading, buying books, and talking about books. Picking one up and actually opening it? That was a whole different story. I put off everything that was good for me. Reading became part of what it meant to take care of myself. One year, as an end-of-year gift, I asked for the BILLY bookshelf from IKEA. Collecting as an interest grew, and impostor syndrome came along for the ride.
I then started a private YouTube channel to document the books I had fallen in love with. Another interest was taking up my reading time. I procrastinated everything that I knew would be fulfilling. Blogs, podcasts, and zines filled the hours I had bullet journaled for reading. I buried my Goodreads challenge under layers of reading aesthetic. Anything but reading alone.
I would spend hours writing essays about reading and authors, researching new books, making lists, and planning my reading time. Everything but reading.
Today, I am an adult who still forgets how to quiet my thoughts. I knew more about self-soothing as a child than I do now.
I called my mum this week, and she reminded me that I am the kind of person who needs to stay active. Sitting with my thoughts has never worked for me, she said, and she was right.
I opened a book for the first time in weeks. For a little while, it quieted my thoughts. I will forget that again soon, and then I will remember, or not.
I suspect many of us live like this, always wanting what is ahead but rarely at ease with what is here. Overcoming the inertia and leaning into the act of creating is one way to fight what I think of as the quiet, unheralded tragedy of procrastination.
The word “reading” could be replaced with anything that makes me feel alive. That is the problem I am working through. Maybe you notice it in yourself too, the things we push off, the things we turn into lists, rules, or projects instead of just doing. For now, I am starting with reading.
What are you putting off until you love yourself?
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