Abigail M. Schilling

Last night I decided it was No T.V. Night. I had finished The Office Season 2 (again) in the am before going to work (they are so lucky to have me) and the only thing I had left (ha!) was Entourage and since I have not (yet) entrenched myself into Adrian Grenier and Jeremy Piven's deliciousness I decided to read. A book. Quietly.

(I also decided to use less parenthetical statements and run on sentences.)

(Juuuuust kidding.)

I'm the heated throws of Sense and Sensibility which means I'm not very far at all. I'm enjoying it: forming opinions about the characters, anxiously awaiting new plot developments, etc., etc. And yet, I could sit here all day and type about how I feel about a book I'm hardly reading.

I want to read it and yet I procrastinate from doing something I supposedly want to do. What is that? I wonder if it's leftover from school. From being trained for so long (7 years at least) to read smart books and think smart things and write smart things all in a matter of days.

I'm a slow reader and an even slower thinker. I remember being 15 and exasperated with The Scarlet Letter because it was sooooo sloooooooow and why so much with the creek already!? And I remember hearing my teacher's voice in the back of my head instructing the class to watch for symbolism. Nathaniel Hawthorne was a master. But we had a weekend to read it and I was too frustrated with the entire concept of being forced to do anything that I totally missed all the symbolism. Like the creek.

[This is the part where I removed a whole several-paragraph tangent to save you all from my extra-lengthy stream of consciousness.]

But last night--when I had convinced myself that no one was breathing down my neck, that I could read as slow or as fast as I wanted, that I didn't have to watch for symbolism, that I could just enjoy that book that I claimed to be enjoying--I fell asleep. Bam. Fifty pages of Willoughby (who seems very hot) and I was out. Out cold. Through the night. Austen put me to sleep for twelve hours and I wasn't even bored with her story.

Will I ever be cured?