Day 87

In a small way, today's photo represents the choices I make. Pictured here are two books. One is the book I wanted to read and the other is the one I chose to read.


Not long after the beginning of the year, I started reading the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. I started the fourth and final book somewhere around the beginning of the month. I do not get a lot of time to read. Actually, between a full-time job and being a full-time mom and wife, I do not have a lot of time to myself. The moments I do have are precious and few.

I try to stay active with the book group at my church. We meet once a month, which seems like a simple commitment, but I'd missed at least the last two meetings. This month I was determined to go. About one week before we were supposed to meet on the 20th, I still hadn't cracked open the book for the group, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller. I knew that there was no way I'd have the time to finish Breaking Dawn and read this book. So about 150 pages before the end, I put down my fun book and chose to read the other book. I'm pretty pleased because I managed to get about two-thirds of the way into the book before our meeting.

Why write about all of this now? After our group met last Friday, instead of going back to Breaking Dawn and just returning Don't Let's Go to the library, I decided to finish the book from our group. I was finally able to finish it tonight. It really is an interesting book and a worthwhile read.

Breaking Dawn will probably not make it through the weekend before I'm done with it. I feel fairly proud of myself for having the discipline to finish what I started instead of opting for the more enjoyable read with my limited resources. But before you feel too sorry for me about putting a book down right at the climax, I am not quite disciplined enough to not skim ahead. ;)

I am considering starting to keep track of the books and possibly other things I've accomplished through out the year. Sometimes it gets overwhelming to think that I have so little down time. It'll be nice to keep myself in check by seeing that I am actually accomplishing something. I'm going to try to make it my goal to read one book a month - aside from the ones for our book group. We'll see how I do.