I pulled out an old reading log a few weeks back looking for something specific, a note I half remembered about a book I wanted to recommend, and ended up spending an entire evening just reading my own handwriting instead of finding what I came for. the entries are supposed to be about the books. mostly they aren’t, not really, not once you actually look at them closely.

there’s an entry from a few years back, before the museum job, when I was still doing warehouse inventory work, and the note next to some book I barely remember reading says something like “read on break, ten minutes at a time, don’t remember half of it.” that tells you almost nothing about the book. it tells you a huge amount about that stretch of my life, exhausted, reading in fragments, holding onto something that wasn’t the job even if I could only manage it in scraps.

another entry, later, marks the exact week I started at the museum, and the handwriting is noticeably different, looser, faster, like I had more attention to spare on the actual sentence instead of just getting the fact down. I didn’t notice that shift happening in real time. it’s only visible looking back, the way you can’t feel yourself getting used to a new job while it’s happening, you just wake up one day already used to it.

I read forty minutes most nights before bed, which is a specific number I’ve settled on more or less by accident. it started because I was trying to read myself tired instead of scrolling myself awake, and forty minutes turned out to be roughly the amount of time it takes before my eyes actually start going. I’ve tried to extend it on purpose, on nights when a book’s really working, and it almost never sticks, my body seems to have opinions about this independent of the story.

what the log actually is, I think, once you strip away the pretense that it’s a tidy record of titles and star ratings, is a diary I never meant to keep. it just happened to use books as the excuse. I wasn’t disciplined enough to sit down and write “here is how I’m doing” most weeks of my adult life. I was disciplined enough to write down what I read and half a sentence about how it felt, and it turns out that’s the same document, just wearing a more socially acceptable cover.

I still haven’t found the note I was originally looking for. I’ve decided that’s fine. I found a few years of myself instead, which feels like a fair trade for one lost recommendation.