I am what I read

However much I love reading, I'm not an indiscriminate reader. I learned to love reading pretty much from the moment I learned to read. I thought as a child that I would love to read anything, although I allowed that I would find certain types of texts generally more enjoyable than others. For instance, as a child I preferred novels over newspapers because fiction was more "fun" (a bookworm's rebellion against parents that thought NY Times articles more worthy of reading than Judy Bloom novels).

What I have become more aware of, as I grow older and the stages of my life begin to take shape, is that such a general view of what I enjoy reading doesn't hold - I have become quite enamored with the NY Times, particularly certain political columnists and travel series, and have been known to find other non-fiction quite engaging as well. Instead, what I choose to read, and actually enjoy, is a symptom of my mental state at that given time. It is tied to my mental capacity, maturity level and preoccupation at a particular time in my life. This is why I have discarded books after a few pages only to devour them years later, and also why I re-read certain favorites (the ones that resonate deeply with my soul) at various stages of my life, each time gleaning new meaning and renewed pleasure (don't we all?). As such, my life's reading list is my life's soundtrack, the tone and subject matter providing a fitting accompaniment to my life and thoughts as I live and think.

It has been said and written many times before: "you are what you read." I always knew this to mean that you are shaped by what you read, which I am. I now know that it also means that I am drawn to reading what my mind and soul crave.

Inner Voice

CJ's Inner Voice might be an alternative name for this blog, and so I thought it an appropriate topic for the blog's first entry. I always thought that if I started to write again, it would be in a journal (private) or it would be a novel (private until you've finished the volume and convinced someone to publish it, and then out-of-your-control public). However, having been granted a few months of leisure, I'm becoming acutely aware of my inner voice, and its need of an outlet. And so I am resorting to this - a blog (immediately public, but really only as public as you want it to be).

I have rarely found a reason to read someone else's blog, and when referred to one, almost always wonder why someone would go through the trouble of publishing those thoughts at all. So you can imagine my skepticism about starting one. Who would want to read what I have to say?

I have clearly gotten past that skepticism out of necessity. I am grateful for my newfound leisure time, but one by-product is that my inner voice runs rampant with no place to go, and thus no rest. When I was wasting almost all of my mental energy on solving other people's problems using too many words in overly-formal written instruments, I had little to no energy left to remark on anything else. I certainly had no time or energy to express any of the meager remarks that did come to mind, save briefly at lunch to a co-worker (I would have let some loose at dinner, too, but found most of those thoughts unworthy of dinner conversation). I now have much better material for dinner conversation, but dinner lasts only so long. So I'm putting my thoughts here.

I'm still skeptical about whether any of it will be worth reading, but I'm beginning to realize that isn't the point of blogging, or at least not all blogs. I just want to send these thoughts into the void. Good day, dear void.