I’ve read one book this year, but I’ve experienced a whole lot more

Last year, my brother introduced me to Overdrive, where you can connect to any library you have an account with to get access to digital books. It is an incredibly effective way to increase how many books you read. After reading/listening to around two books a week for an entire year, I realized too much of a good thing does have its downsides.
I had no idea
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Not counting the physical books, I had read (sometimes more than once) 92 books on the Overdrive app. These were mostly audiobooks with some ebooks sprinkled in. As I’ve mentioned in my article, “My Writing Improved Once I Made a Point to Read More,” I was on a mission to tackle more books to improve my writing, and Overdrive fueled me with book after book. I was addicted to the words and found myself building a reading formula that went something like: educational book, fiction for fun, personal growth, a novel for pleasure, non-fictional history, fiction for fun, so on and so forth.
Wakeup call at the grocery store
I listened to audiobooks as I biked to work. I listened when I cooked. I listened every chance I got. Without realizing it, I built a habit of diving into a book into most aspects of my everyday life.
I had the eye-opening realization of this fact during a trip to the grocery store. For the first time I could remember, I went shopping without a trusty audiobook lulling me along. The experience was like I’d never been grocery shopping before. Everything about the experience was foreign, yet nostalgic. The 90’s radio hits transported me to times long forgotten, juicy gossip convinced me to stay in aisle three a little longer than expected, and I found myself fully experiencing the hustle and bustle that is grocery shopping. It stopped me in my tracks.
What else had I missed?
I started wondering what other daily experiences I missed while buried in a book. Running through the list of times I was reading instead of experiencing the world around me, I realized some of the things I missed were worth missing. Dental cleanings and plane rides are the first to come to mind that I would much rather enjoy a book rather than the experience. But for many other of life’s experiences, I decided to put down my book and be present.
Life in moderation
We don’t want to drink too much water, and too much oxygen is as bad as too little. The things we need to live are dangerous in high quantities, and I firmly believe books are a necessary part of life. I’ve decided after reading 100 books in one year that I should worry more about being present. For me, 100 is too many.
No one can tell you what your moderation level is, but I plan to try and stick to one or two a month so that I can be present and available to everything else in my life. Read, learn, progress, but don’t forget there’s still plenty to experience all around us.
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