Trying to read for the Hugos
Apr. 18th, 2017 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morgan_dhuMy medical issues over the past year (yeah, i'll soon be a year since I was diagnosed with hypercalcemia and my life turned into one medical nightmare after another) have severely interfered with my new identity as a Hugo voter. Over the course of last year, I didn't read nearly as many well-recommended works as I'd wanted to. So when January rolled around and nomination season was gearing up, I made lists of the books and short fiction I hadn't read but that sounded really interesting, and tried to push my way through those lists. A few years ago I could have done it easily. This year, I barely read a handful of what I wanted to, though I did read enough, I felt, to make some good nominations in most categories.
And now the finalists have been released and there are many I haven't read yet. I'm working on them, of course, but it's so hard to just focus and read these days.
It's disorienting, like losing one of the core parts of my identity - which I suppose it is, I have no memory of a tine when I did not read, and read extensively and quickly at that. I'm told that no one knows when I learned to read. Like many kids, I would often look at my books even when I wasn't being read to from a very early age, but it was assumed that I was looking at the pictures or making up stories, as kids do. It wasn't until my mother started listening to me muttering things when we were out driving that she realised that - at not yet three years of age - I was reading billboards and window signs. And that at some point, I had actually begun reading for myself, not just following along as she read to me.
So it feels very strange not to be reading very much. As though I'm not myself. I keep expecting the real me, who focuses easily on her chosen reading material and moves through it like a fish in water, to resurface. Maybe she's just taking a time-out, getting used to operating while in constant pain and without much sleep. But I fear more and more that she's gone, and won't be coming back.
I miss her very much.
And now the finalists have been released and there are many I haven't read yet. I'm working on them, of course, but it's so hard to just focus and read these days.
It's disorienting, like losing one of the core parts of my identity - which I suppose it is, I have no memory of a tine when I did not read, and read extensively and quickly at that. I'm told that no one knows when I learned to read. Like many kids, I would often look at my books even when I wasn't being read to from a very early age, but it was assumed that I was looking at the pictures or making up stories, as kids do. It wasn't until my mother started listening to me muttering things when we were out driving that she realised that - at not yet three years of age - I was reading billboards and window signs. And that at some point, I had actually begun reading for myself, not just following along as she read to me.
So it feels very strange not to be reading very much. As though I'm not myself. I keep expecting the real me, who focuses easily on her chosen reading material and moves through it like a fish in water, to resurface. Maybe she's just taking a time-out, getting used to operating while in constant pain and without much sleep. But I fear more and more that she's gone, and won't be coming back.
I miss her very much.
