I enjoy reading. So much so, that I even equated my love for my husband to this peaceful pastime in my wedding vows.
I've always enjoyed cracking the spine of a nice hard cover book—much to the dismay of my older sister, Lauren, who required that I hold each Harry Potter book open at a 45 degree angle and strain my eyes to read until I'd reached the exact middle of the book. At which point I was then able to allow the book to lay open completely flat and read like a normal human—at least for a few pages.
What do I like to read, you ask?
All kinds of things. Nearly anything. I love the written word. It’s a beautiful thing to see how the same words placed together in different sequences can tell tremendously different stories. I love the adventures and dreams and worlds created through the written word. I can appreciate the art in just about anything written.
Just about.
On a not-so-recent trip to my local library, I learned of the Cloud Library app which would allow me the opportunity to check out eBooks and audio books anytime I wanted!
Let the games begin!
I immediately dove down the rabbit hole of Abstracts and reviews. Suggestions of all the latest and greatest reads of the season scrolled past. I’d chosen a few to read and to listen. Some I adored, and some I could’ve gone without reading, and others taught me valuable lessons.
One book in particular inspired me to do. Do what, you might ask? Anything. It inspired me to actually do things that I want and plan to do.
It was a memoir. A short anthology of personal essays. The stories didn’t seem to be in the most particular of orders. And while the final chapters seemed to attempt an empowering message—I had trouble finding the point of it all, other than publishing an autobiographical collection of personal essays. It was an interesting read, but I couldn’t relate to it. The subject was charming enough and there was enough drama to evoke intrigue; however, I couldn’t make myself like reading it. As I struggled my way through, hoping it would climax at the end like the brick that was Mocking Jay, I found myself becoming one of those people— a pedant.
Now most avid readers and writers happen upon typos and incorrectly used words, and ignore them all the same for the love of reading, and out of respect and understanding of the painstaking process of writing, editing, rewriting, further editing, and publishing. For some unGodly reason, I became that vile being who, instead of gazing past the errors and taking the written words for what they were meant to be, I found myself not just pausing to correct them in my mind, but full on stopping to have an entire conversation (read: rant) with my husband about the process. I implored him, why anyone would desecrate the meaning of their writing by overlooking the errors in the editing process. How?! Why would you allow your dream, your life, your everything to be published with such mistakes?!
And then, I read it. What did I read, you ask? It. The reference that I took as a personal afront to my character as a reader! This writer had the nerve, the audacity, to confuse the Incredible Hulk with the Rubberband man. Banner. I get it. But this was inexcusable. How dare they?! I finished the book scamming for errors, taking offense each and every time I thought something could’ve been stated in another way. I nitpicked my way to the very end. I was so hungry for blood that I spent way too much time researching the author in an attempt to understand even more about how and why she could be so careless with my time.
And then it occurred to me. She wrote a book.
I consider myself a writer. I’ve got drafts upon drafts of short stories saved on my phone, on my computer, in countless notebooks. I’ve even begun my first draft of a book I dream of publishing one day. But I’ve not posted consistently on my blog in years, I can’t remember the last time I filled an entire page of my journal, and in case you didn’t catch it before—my phone, computer, and lifetime supply of notebooks are filled with drafts.
I had the nerve, the audacity to insult this writer’s work; to negate the beauty of actually completing the daunting, seemingly endless process; to ignore the courageousness and confidence of sharing one’s story despite the prospect of unwarrented criticism—without acknowleging the simple fact that she wrote a book.
She completed the process. She had an idea, she wrote it down, she shared it. She wrote a book.
This realization hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt inspired and admonished all at once.
It is indeed important to do things as well as can be done; however, a dream or idea is darn near worthless if never brought to fruition.
I was reminded that it’s not enough to just want to be or plan to do. I must actually be, I must actually do.