Recently, I had a stretch of a couple of stressful days.
Nothing life-changing or devastating, but enough to keep my mind occupied for most of the day. I had problems focusing on my job.
Everything worked out okay. But, for a day or two, I was a ball of stress—and, as a result, my reading suffered.
In fact, I didn’t read at all for about two or three days. At first, I didn’t even notice because I was busy taking care of life things.
Then, a few days later when I picked A Passage To India back up, it took me a while to even remember what was happening in the novel the last time I read it.
That got me to thinking about how we, as readers, respond to stress in our personal lives.
Do you find that personal stress negatively impacts your reading? Or when life sucks, do you run straight to a book, as a sort of escape?
I’m sure there’s variations in between those two extremes. But, for me, I absolutely have a difficult time focusing on reading when something stressful is going on in my life.
So how do you respond to stress? Does it make you read more or read less?
(Image: Alan Cleaver/Creative Commons)
