State: low mental health, retreating, escapism
Reading Mode: high-volume, distributed across subgenres
Pattern: less bingeing, more intentional variety
This section is a place where I give non-reading context to the month, as an anchor to life events while reading.
The first couple of weeks this month we were still in Florida, then we came back to Scotland. Unfortunately my mental health has been crap, early on because of some ongoing stress, and late on because being away from Nick and everything I’ve got in Florida is always emotionally rough. I am pleased that I read so much this month, but it's a direct reflection of my need to escape mentally which makes it bittersweet.
I'm seeing real results from using a better tracking system here, I'm spreading out through sub-genres with more intent and not getting stuck on linear binges. This month I've also managed to get over my aversion to paying for ebooks. Before, I wouldn't want to pay a few quid for a book when so much was available to me on Kindle Unlimited. Now, I read a sample, decide if I'm willing to spend, and not be butt-hurt if by the time I finish I feel it wasn't quite worth it.
To surmise: I retreat to my goblin cave when my mental health is poor and I'm not participating socially, and then obviously read a lot. The key here is that now I'm reading more productively so it doesn't feel like a bad habit, and also committing more to writing, so overall I feel less guilty about my hermit state.
PS: This is also the month where I accidentally ruined Nick’s life (briefly, but dramatically) by showing him the illustration from Out of this World (three MMCs and one FMC in an explicit situation) and then ruin it further by forcing him to realise there were six penises, not four. He missed the last guy, under the FMC. He can't stop thinking about it, and it's haunting him. The illustration is inside a book on the shelf in our bedroom and he knows it's there, freaking him out. He has suggested I start tracking “penises per character” as a metric, which is fun and makes me want to actually track penises per book, but ChatGPT has insisted I walk it back and calm the fuck down. We shall see what happens in May. For Nick's sake, because he wanted that ratio, I went back to the March log and I tried to retroactively calculate penises. I gave up halfway through because the omegaverse/reverse harem books broke the system. This was not helped by an ongoing debate about what actually counts as a penis. I maintain that tentacles count. Nick insists it only counts if you also pee out of it. Unfortunately, romance authors are rarely interested in clarifying alien urinary systems, which makes accurate data collection impossible.