20190818.0430

One of the things I have been doing has been work on a re-reading of Robin Hobb's works. I'm close to done with the first novel in the Realm of the Elderlings corpus, Assassin's Apprentice, and I confess to it being a strange thing to have the work come out across so long a time as it has. I've pushed out a chapter's write up on Monday and Friday of most weeks, advancing my account relatively slowly, especially relative to how quickly I still read. It's different from reading as I have read before, and many times, plowing through the books with abandon, spending hours turning pages and realizing only when the book was done that time had passed and I suddenly had a remarkably urgent need to piss.
I cannot do such things anymore, or I cannot do so often. I don't have the luxury of so much time to myself when I do not have to be doing other things--and I do not begrudge it. My life is better as it is than as it was, truly. But I do miss having so much access to that particular part of how my life was that was good. I've missed several such, though I've been taking steps to correct it, to access them again. I've been better off for it, so I might see about trying to return to some of my older reading habits. As much as the obligations I am happy to discharge allow.
Part of why I am doing the work is because I think it needs to be done. I am fond of Hobb's writing, and I do not think it gets enough attention or acclaim. Doing my small part to increase those quantities seems a fitting thing to do, therefore. Too, I continue to have some small part of myself engaged in academe, and doing the re-read allows me to play at doing something I thought would be a career, much as my participation in the bands I am in allows me to play at doing something else I thought would be a career. (I thought I'd be a band director when I grew up. I'm grown; I'm not a band director. But it works for me.) And I may end up getting one paper or another out of it, in time. (As it is, I've got an idea for a conference piece I might want to pitch. Maybe two. Or three...) So that would be to the good.
I doubt I'll ever have the chance to read the way I used to again. And I miss being able to immerse myself, lose myself in the words on the pages I would turn. But I do not miss it as much as I would miss what I have now, I think, were I to try to return to it.