Waching daily Dec 4 2017

Hi everyone. I'm rincey and this is rincey reads. Today i'm going to be doing

a discussion video basically. A couple of you guys commented on my first video

that I put up for vlogmas saying you wanted me to make a video talking about

the whole discussion that's been happening around like reading fatigue,

booktube fatigue, reading being a competition. I'm going to link a bunch of

videos down in the description box because there have been a lot of really

great discussions going on around this. I believe it basically started with

Mercedes for mercy's bookish musings making a video talking about falling out

of love with reading. I'll link that as well as like her follow-up video that she

made on that. Ariel Bisset made a video talking about reading being a

competition. A couple of other people including Jennifer from oh my gosh I

cannot remember her channel name right now. Her video will be linked down below as

well as like a number of different people have talked about this in various

formats. There's like a bunch of different angles being discussed here

and a bunch of different topics being discussed here. And part of me wanted to

make like entire videos just based on each topic. And part of me wanted to like

not participate in the discussion just because there are so many great things

being said by so many other people that I didn't know if I really had something

to add to the conversation. But a couple of you guys asked so I figured I would

just talk about it for my own just like personal point of view. That's kind of

what some of you guys are asking for. Like what's my experience with reading

fatigue, booktube fatigue, and reading feeling like the competition. And first I

want to say like all of those things are very real. Like these are very much

things that happen when you become a person who reads as part of a community

whether it be booktube or bookstagram or as a book blogger or anything

along those lines. Or even just like being a part of Goodreads in general and

seeing like how other people are reading. And I have talked about this at some

capacity before. I made a video a couple of years ago called stop stressing out

about reading, which I feel like is still completely relevant. And if you watch

that video you'll see that we were having sort of the same conversations a

couple of years ago. You'll also get to see my old intro and my old video style,

what I look like without glasses as well as what I look like before I learned

color correction. I'm of the opinion that if you do anything a lot you're going to

get fatigued. I think that's just how humans work. If you read a lot, you're

gonna get fatigued. Even if you like watch a lot of television, you're gonna

fatigue even though it's basically just you sitting there. Even if you sleep a

lot, like that isn't healthy for you. You're supposed to do like a certain

amount of each of those activities and you're supposed to mix things up.

You're not even supposed to eat like the same food over and over again like you need

variety in your life. And so I feel like fatigue is very much a thing that

happens when you do something a lot. On booktube, all of us read a lot and all of

us consume a lot of booktube and a lot of us spend a lot of time in the book

world and fatigue is real. And sometimes we need breaks and it's completely

normal and healthy to take those breaks and to step back from these activities

that we enjoy doing and to do something else for a while. Because, I've said this

before and I will continue saying it, we are all more than just readers. We're all

more than just book people. It may be a significant part of who we are and it

may take up a significant portion of our time but it isn't the only thing that we

are. A lot of us have friends and family members that we care about, a lot of us

enjoy watching movies and television and going to concerts and listening to music

and painting and drawing and taking pictures and going on hikes and playing

sports. Like we're all multifaceted people. So I don't think that there's

anything wrong with spending time doing those other activities instead of

reading. I think for me, personally, the reason why I keep coming back to reading

is because it is sort of like just a facet of my time. Like I don't spend all

day, every day reading. Even on days that I have like a completely free day,

I don't spend the entire day reading. I might spend a lot of the day reading but

there are other things I really enjoy doing and I think that's what keeps

reading fresh for me. And another thing that helps me from not getting fatigued

is just like I mix things up a lot with my reading as you guys are aware. I like

a lot of different genres and personally it helps me not get bored with reading.

I can tell when I've been reading a lot of any single genre that I start to get

like really frustrated with it or I start to get really bored with it or

I just don't enjoy it in general. So I mix things up by picking up a fiction book

and then a nonfiction book and then a mystery book and then sometimes I'll

throw in a fantasy or kids book or a graphic novel or something along those

lines that make it continue to be this like fresh new experience. And I feel

part of this fatigue, whether it be reading fatigue or booktube

fatigue also comes from this sort of expectations that we hold ourselves to.

There's a lot of people who talk about how bad they feel when they don't read

books off their TBR's or they post about a book on Goodreads and they want to

give up on it but they don't want to give up on it because they've already

said that they're reading it. Like do people actually get angry when people

stop reading books? I like, I don't mean that as like a cruel comment although

there was like a little bit of sarcasm in my voice there. But honestly like I've

never watched anyone have been like, 'oh how dare they put down their book. I was

100% wanting their opinion on it.' Which if you think about it, them giving up on

the book is kind of them giving an opinion on it. But it also might have

just been not the right time for them. There's never been a point like during

my period on booktube and reading sort of in this public manner where I DNF'd

a book and anyone's been like really upset. If they express any sort of like

sadness it's just over the fact that I didn't enjoy the book itself because

either they wanted me to enjoy the book or they wanted it to be a good

experience so that way they would know it would be a good experience for them

as well. But there's never been a point in time where someone's been like

actively disappointed in me. I feel like that's all pressure we put on ourselves.

We feel like we're disappointing people but believe it or not most of the time

people are just excited that we're making videos and talking about books.

So yeah, I feel like a lot of this pressure and just stress is self-imposed and it

takes a lot to break your own personal mindset and to realize like what people

actually expect of you is really not as high of a bar as you might personally

expect from yourself, which is the thing that I struggle with constantly. Believe

me when I say that. So how do I deal with all of this? I basically just compare

myself to me. So I made a book riot video relatively recently talking about

how I set up my reading goals and one of the things I talked about there as

well as I believe I've talked about in goals videos on here as well is like

I set up the 50 book challenge to only ever be 50 books because I know that for

me personally 50 books is a good marker. Like this year I'm on track to read

probably a hundred I don't know if I'm actually gonna hit 100. I've already read

more than 90. But the thing is is like after I reach 50 books I never

bothered to raise my goal because I know that for me 50 books is a very

like solid marker and like as long as I surpassed that I'm happy. And even if I

don't surpass that I feel like I'm pretty happy because who I am now, I'm

already reading so much more than I used to pre booktube and in a very good

way. I also make goals and expectations based on like what I personally know are

like relatively achievable for me. So like for example, when I'm doing like

readathons or any sort of like TBR type situations like even nonfiction November

I tried my best to read a book from every category but I also was aware that

it probably wasn't going to work out that way. So I was perfectly content with

mashing up categories. My reading goals aren't really based on what everyone

else is reading goals are. It's very much like me assessing myself and being like

okay, this is what I accomplished last year what are some of the things I'm

interested in accomplishing next year and what is a reasonable sort of idea

for me. Like obviously I want to push myself sometimes and obviously I don't

want to become overly complacent with my reading. But I feel like I've already

pushed myself above and beyond what I thought was possible.

Maybe I just have really low expectations for myself so I'm always

exceeding them but I think that there is something to be said about like doing

self assessments and having your assessment being based on like you and

not what other people are doing. I think another part of this whole

discussion is this keeping up with the Joneses sort of mentality that can

happen in every single part of your life. It doesn't matter if you're in school, if

you're working, if you're an adult, there's always going to be some aspect

of your life that you could theoretically compare to other people

and you measure you-- you could measure yourself up against how other people are

doing. If you're in school it's like grades are very clearly a easy way to

compare yourself to other people. Depending on what school you went to you

might have even had like a ranking system. It could be, you know, after school

how much money you make, what your position is at your job, if you're

married, if you have kids, etc. etc. Like there are all these different ways that

you can measure yourself up against other people and I think in booktube

it's very much a thing or just like publicly reading in general it very much

is a thing. Am I reading enough books? Am I reading the right books? Am I getting

enough views on my videos because I am or am not

reading the right books or making the right type of content? And I think that

it doesn't matter where you are in life, the sooner you can read yourself of that

sort of mentality, the better off you are. I'm not really sure I have like great

advice in terms of overcoming that outside of just what I said previously

about like comparing yourself to yourself and seeing like personal growth

and personal progress and letting that sort of be a good indicator for like how

you're doing in life. But I think you also need to be aware of like all of the

other aspects of your life. Ariel talks about how we often don't take life

events into account when we're talking about our reading life. So like for her

she's in grad school right now or she's getting her master's.

That's grad school, right? And so obviously she's not going to be able to

read as much as she used to and that's fine. Like I started a new job and that

had an impact on other parts of my life or if you're starting school or if

you're off from school or if you spend a lot of time traveling and it's

fine if it impacts your reading life. And I think that being like, 'hey, I just tried

my best and this is where it got me.' That's totally fine. And again, this is

all hobbies. Like reading is a hobby, reading is a thing all of us do for fun, I hope.

Outside of like a handful of people who might work in the book world or work

as like a reviewer or something like that, all of us are doing this for fun. And so

if it's not fun for you, change it up, do something different, take a break, you

know do whatever you need to do to like make it fun again. For me that means

reading the books I want to read when I want to read them, giving up on books

when I don't want to read them anymore, not necessarily always reading the books

that everyone else is reading. It means that I'm not reading necessarily every

single day and it means that sometimes it takes me two months to finish a book.

I'm still reading that Washington biography by the way. It's still going

and that's fine. I'm reading it at the pace that I'm comfortable with reading

it at and sometimes I put it down and read something else and that's fine, too.

You know, like you have to do what's best for you. And I think that like being on

booktube is a good thing because like it exposes you to the way different people

read. Like some people are really, really great at making TBR's and then reading

the books off of that TBR. Like it really helps them structure their reading and

to make plans and things like that. I'm not that type of person and until I

tried it I wouldn't have known that. And I think it's okay to not be that

kind of reader. Like figure out the type of reader you are and read that way and

figure out the type of booktuber you are and booktube that way. And maybe that

means you make videos that aren't about booktube and that's fine to. Do what

makes you happy. That's what it all comes down to. This is, again, a hobby for all of

us, or most of us I should say. Do what makes you happy. Do what feels best for you.

Yeah that's all it comes down to. So yeah hopefully this video was helpful

and not too rambley and made some sense. Definite leave a comment down below

letting me know what you guys think and if you felt this before. Again, reading

stress, reading fatigue, booktube stress, booktube fatigue, reading as a

competition, like it's all very, very real and I'm not like dismissing anyone's

feelings or comments about it. I feel like it's a part of the growing process

as like a human being is realizing that you experience these things and then

learning how you overcome them. Like when I watched all of these different videos

I'm like yeah, I've felt all those things before for sure. And then I figured out

how to not. So if you have any questions, definitely leave it down below. I'm happy

to sort of talk about my own reading experiences and reading life and the way

that I do things. Like one of the things, I didn't even talk about this. Very often

I don't talk about what I'm currently reading. Maybe like once a month, I'll

post a Friday reads video. But I very rarely update like my Goodreads status,

like I don't put page or percentage numbers anymore. The most I'll do is like

after a certain point in the book when I know like I'm pretty sure I'm gonna

finish it I add it to Goodreads. Like I don't put a book on Goodreads until like

a day or two after I've started it because at that point I know whether or

not I'm going to be continuing on with it. That removes a lot of the pressure.

Just because a lot of times I don't know what I'm in the mood for to read and so

I like to skip around a little bit. It's why I like in my November wrap up that I

posted it I talked-- I mentioned it briefly when I was talking about

Artemis. Like the only reason why I talked about that putting that book down

is because I publicly talked about it already. Otherwise I probably would have

just put it down and moved on to something else and then if I'd gotten

back to it then if I finished it, I would have talked about it. But yeah, I feel

like a lot of what we do as readers, we feel an obligation to our audiences now

that we have sort of audiences. I, all of that should be air quotes I feel like.

But like I think figuring out what part of your reading life you want to

share with people and what's best if you keep to yourself is totally fine. Like

I share with you guys every book that I finish but I don't necessarily share

with you guys every book that I start. So that's the thing to think about. Maybe

that could be an entire video into itself. I don't know. Let me know down in

the comments below and I will see you guys next time. Bye.