The Challenge of challenges, along with other disassociated thoughts

I'm amazed by the literary blogs I tour. I blog hop far more frequently than I should, but it's just so doggone fun.  Dismaying sometimes, but fun. Those of you who read so much! Who participate in all those tasty reading challenges! I want to be you. There's the Pulitzer Challenge, the Nobel Challenge, and so many more it boggles my fuzzy, little brain. If you can name a prize or a genre, there's a challenge for it. And more, there are people doing it.

I mean reading, you naughty, naughty thing.

I'm looking for a Challenge for those with Limited Time and No End of Distractability. Anyone seen that around the blogosphere? Maybe I should start it myself, fashioning a graphic button featuring a woman with wild hair, rubbing her hands like Lady Macbeth, looking one part excited, three parts completely insane. Next time I pass a mirror I'll take a self portrait and get going on that.

That I had world enough and time!

I used to be one of the bloggers with seemingly infinite reading capability. And it sometimes feels so sad sitting on the sidelines, like the last puppy left to languish in the window (about which no one even asks the price! sniffle!), while others manage to juggle everything and still read the equivalent of the contents of the Library of Congress every year. I'm torn. Should I love you, or hate you, giving in to that most wicked of sins - JEALOUSY. I said that out loud, didn't I? Is this thing on? (tap, tap)

Meanwhile, I scramble to do whatever it is I do, reading much less than I'd like. It's heartache inducing, even if this summer has allowed me something resembling the volume of reading I used to do, as an at-home mom. With a very messy house. Now I'm a part-time working, part-time grad schooling reader/writer/dogsbody who fits in reading where she can. And still has a messy house.

 Even if I found a way to read 24 hours a day I'd still say it wasn't enough, because all you dratted good writers keep writing dratted good books. Would it kill you to stop long enough for me to get caught up? Well, would it? I'm looking at you, Joyce Carol Oates. Yes, you, at least until you turn sideways. Then you're too thin to see. I bet she has fun with that at parties:

Famous Literary Celebrity: So, Joyce, how's that new novel coming along? Isn't it the second you've written this week? Ummm, where'd she go?

Other FLC: See that disembodied martini glass over there, the one hovering in mid-air? That's her.

FLC: Are you sure? It looks like the stem of a champagne flute glass to me. Oh, I see. She just turned back around.

And for that there's a special category of jealousy. It's called pass the chocolate ice cream and I'll cry in existential angst, curled up in fetal position, trying to simultaneously suck my thumb and fit the spoon into my mouth, as the credits go past in Swedish.

I should wobble off now and see if there's any Oreo ice cream left in the freezer. My kids have been on summer break for two whole days, but I'm sure they left me some. Sure. That's probably the most unbalanced statement in this entire post. And that's no small feat.

I'm off, people. Off to do what it is I must do today. Now you go, and do what you must. I'll meet you back here later.

[Cut to scene of clown crying, as rosebuds gently drift by in the breeze.]

Le Fin

Comments

[dovegreyreader]

Love us over at dgr scribbles Lisa, we're doing Ulysses at 2 pages a day to finish on Bloomsday 2010. It's not a challenge, it's just a mountain plenty of us have thought we can't possibly climb alone and so we've roped up together and we're at basecamp getting acclimatized. We're going to bivouac on the 16th of each month to share oxygen and encourage each other. x

[Scriptor Senex]

I think need the long dark winter nights back to be able to catch up with reporting on my challenges and things. At least when its cold and wet and dark outside there are fewer distractions though blogging just seems to grow like Topsy.

[Rebecca Reid]

And I was going to say I like the Cereal Box challenge idea. I think we could all do that one!

[Rebecca Reid]

You are so funny!

When I started blogging, I got carried away signing up for challenges. I'm finding I don't have time for them all, and the unfinished-ness of everything drives me crazy. I'm kind of forgetting the "challenges" overall and going back to reading what I want. Still remembering the lists I made. I'm more likely to do the challenges I wanted to do all along: Nobel Prizes, Pulitzer, etc.

I think every book blogger feels there is never enough time to read. I've had a few weeks where I don't get through more than 100 pages! It certainly doesn't feel like enough, and it takes forever to get through books at that rate.

[J.G.]

I like your challenge idea! (Because I can relate!)

Maybe it could include things like cereal boxes. That counts as reading, right?