Reading List // 2.8.18

My New Year's Resolution has been two-fold: first, to keep a list of every book I finish this year, and second, to, by year's end, become the sort of person who will not post that list on any social media platforms.

I know already how I will behave if I share the list. Every time someone likes the post I will return to it, read my list again and imagine how that person reacted to each item. I will constantly recheck the log of likes. I will wonder if this or that person, who liked the post, has unwittingly betrayed their infatuation with me, and if perhaps the two of us will be married someday, and if we might hyphenate our last names, and whose name might go first, and I will consider which arrangement sounds best for both our names. Such is my neurosis.

But also I must decide not to share the list or it will screw up my reading all year; I will read short books for numbers, big pretentious books for the imagined glory this will bring me. And all for maybe four Twitter hearts.

The issue is I'm a narcissist, who checks the list anyways, and considers what people would think of it, and I lambast myself for reading so slowly, or for having wasted time rereading The Restaraunt at the End of The Universe. I'm trying to impress myself, and this is just as bad, perhaps worse, because I know how I react, I do not get to imagine nice things. (I lament that where should have once grown humility, I have instead something more like self-hatred.) I actually have no idea what benefit this list is bringing me.

I share all this, one, because I haven't blogged in a few days, and I am all-out on affirmation (if you see me at times posting on Instagram more often than usual, you can tell I'm feeling neglected (I always Instagram far too often directly after break-ups)). And two, because I have found that sharing my neuroses is at times a useful strategy for ridding myself of them. Worth a shot.