the real reason why you're in a reading slump
| on performativeness and how to get outta a reading slump
Every time I fell into a reading slump, I’d blame myself to death, repeating things like “Why did I scroll insta sm?”, “I should’ve finished that book I started reading more than a month ago”, “Why do I keep running away from my fav hobby ever?”, and what not, but recently I had an epiphany (if you’re new here, just know I have way too many of those).
It all started when I was researching some stuff I was curious about like ‘the urge to write down everything’ (its called Hypergraphia btw), ‘pretense/pretentiousness & how it links to being performative in different aspects of life’ along with ‘being too much in your head’.
A brief intro to what pretentiousness is, according to the Cambridge dictionary, it’s the quality of trying to make yourself appear or sound more important or clever than you are. And I’ve noticed a lot of people fall prey to this, they want to be perceived as an intellectual being who reads and spends his/her time wisely, doesn’t doomscroll, follows a perfectly planned schedule, reads articles and watches video essays that enrich their knowledge, and don’t get me wrong these are truly some of the things many of us aspire to integrate into our routines, me included.
However, the perception that forms in our brain is mostly centred around the fact that, “we should be doing these things” or “am supposed to be reading and not scrolling rn”. This sense of performative obligation that makes us wanna do things we think are expected of us, expected of a smart intellectual being, but really all this performativeness does is rob you of the joy you’d feel from doing this out of your own will, and because you want to and not because an influencer on tiktok told you to read Wuthering Heights or Psychology of Money (trust me they’re both great books but lets be real not everyone’s cup of tea).
As someone who’s been in an on & off reading slump this year, I was elated when I found out what truly gets one out of it. So am currently reading, King of Envy by Ana Huang (yes am very late to the party but I gotta finish this shi before King of Gluttony comes out), and mind you I started reading it on the 11th of Jan this year, and well am still just at chapter 19 outta the whole 55 chapters, because I kinda fell into a reading slump due to my mid-terms, project submissions and presentations.
But recently, aka 4 days ago I picked up the book again, this time with a purpose of truly just forcing myself to read, and not go on my phone to scroll brain-rot. Again, forcing yourself to do something because its a more desired trait in the society, doesn’t help anyone. However, yesterday I realised I didn’t have to tell myself to read because that’s a better use of my time, I just picked up the book and started reading and annotating with my black gel pen.
And for the first time in so long I felt as if reading wasn’t a burden, a task that the society expected me to do, I genuinely just went back to treating it as my hobby you know, and I think I now know what truly helps one get outta the reading slump, its CURIOSITY.
As simple as it sounds, the urge to know what happens next in the book, is what gets you back into reading again, not romanticising the art of reading by scrolling pinterest and seeing these highly curated set of images, not being a performative reader because that’s what you’re “supposed” to be doing to utilise your time wisely, not the endless booktoks that influence you into reading that one YA fantasy book series you’ve been avoiding, not talking about reading more, but the curiosity, to know why, when, what and how the protagonist navigates through it all, to know why the author emphasised the cobblestones shining under the street light on a foggy morning, to know how a book makes you feel when you show it the excitement, the passion of truly reading it, living it.
Because a lot of people like me, who’ve found a comforting sense of joy in reading over the past few years, something that has kept them company in all the good & bad moments, we truly find reading as a sacred act of love. But then life happens, exams happen, doomscrolling happens, depression happens and we are left with this sense of regret, a hollowed-out sense of responsibility, towards the books on our TBR shelf and the part of ourselves that loves to read and experience going through multiple personas with every book we read.
In conclusion, I’d like to just encourage yall to read whatever YOU find interesting, you don’t have to succumb to booktok trends or the intellectual non-fiction. Read articles on substack, read romcom, read self-help, read a manhwa, but just don’t let yourself be sucked into the void of performative peeps who forget why they got into reading in the first place.
Thank you so much for reading my loves <33
xoxo
Shreya
Thank you, Shreya. I think this was the sign I needed from the universe to get back to reading. I will try to finish a book I started reading a month ago and take it from there. Thanks a lot again. Your blog answered so much of my racing thoughts.
This was thoughtful. I relate to the idea of performative pressure killing enjoyment.
When I was finishing my book before a deadline, I realised something similar and the problem wasn’t discipline alone, it was structure. I used a simple system from How to Finish Everything You Start by Jan Yager instead of forcing intensity, I reduced the task to small, scheduled blocks and chose one clear priority at a time.
The same applies to reading. Picking the right book, the one that genuinely pulls your curiosity and makes consistency easier than forcing yourself through what you think you “should” read.
Curiosity sustains what pressure cannot.