Walking away from books

As you may know, I read a lot. I am typically a 115+ books a year type of reader. It is just who I have always been.

Lately, I have hit an unusual reading conundrum in that I am getting about 60-70% of the way through a book, and then not caring about finishing it. I have done that with three books this year. They cross genres and story types, so it isn’t that I am bored with anything specific I can point at. But for some reason, I am getting bored after reading ⅔ of a book.

Typically, if I am not enjoying a book, I notice it early into the reading process, and then I’ll walk away. But this far in, I feel like I should stick it out, and yet I have had no guilt about setting them aside and moving on. I think that as I get older, I don’t have the patience to push through with anything that I am not enjoying, and that includes books. There are so many things in our daily lives that cause displeasure that we have no control over, so maybe walking away from a boring book is a way to take back some control in my life. We regularly walk away from plenty of other things when we tire of them, and they no longer feed our soul–movies, hobbies, meals, conversations, jobs, relationships–so why not leave a book behind to find one that brings pleasure back into my reading time?

Is this just me? Do you walk away from books that far in? 

Struggling

I am struggling to find contentment in my life lately. I constantly feel like I'm failing at something. I am unhappy with my work-life balance. I have been questioning whether I want to return to my school job after the summer break. I am in a position financially where the extra money is nice, but we don’t need it to survive.

A few weeks before summer break, I ended up at home on a work day because I hurt myself and decided to give myself a healing day. And while I couldn't do much around the house to get caught up on things, what I could do felt amazing for my soul. I was able to do things for my home and my family that I hadn’t done in months. 

Currently being on summer break, the family care part of my soul is fed, and even when I’m feeling stressed, I am still relaxed. But then I get a text from a coworker or run into one of my school kids in the store, and I miss them, but they also instantly cause stress in my body.

If I leave my job, I would miss socializing, the kids, and the extra money, but my mental health would improve. I wouldn’t feel like I'm neglecting my family because work exhausts me mentally. But I worry that I would feel like a weak slacker who couldn’t handle being out in the working world instead of working from home. 

What sucks the most is that being home and being at work each feed different parts of me that need to be fed. So no matter what I choose, I forfeit something I want while keeping something I want.

Free Food

Are you afraid of free food? I don’t mean someone paying for your meal. I mean the end of a communal meal or clear out the pantry, free food that you then take home and use to feed your family. As a military spouse, even if I was at one point in my life, I am definitely not afraid of free food.

Let’s be blunt, most military families are not paid a reasonable wage. So options are to get creative with meal planning, go into debt to give your family a basic necessity or take the freebies when you can get them. I have been in the take the free stuff then creative meal pan camp for a long time.

In the military world, our friends and neighbors move regularly and try as we do we can never use up the food in our freezers and pantry before moving day, which means it gets trashed or given away. More often than not, we give it away and gladly take it from those giving. I know this seems weird to some people, but for many, especially enlisted military families, this is how we survive. We have aged out of WIC, and somehow we make too much for food stamps, so it’s either take whatever handout we can or go into debt. My house is reaching the point of retirement and civilian jobs, but that mindset never leaves.

I work as a school secretary, and we are often gifted food from parents and community members. The week leading into spring break was parent-teacher conferences which meant long days. During those long days, our PTO, principals, and community members gifted us with snacks, lunches, and dinners. At the end of it, my Assistant Principal sent me home with all the leftovers because it was that or trash them, and I was not letting any of that go to waste.

That meant my son and husband spent a few days eating leftover pizzas and sandwiches for lunches. It meant that we had a lot of donuts for snacks and breakfasts. And it meant that I took apart both a veggie tray and a cheese and hummus tray, then meal planned using those pieces for dinners over the break. Were they the best meals? Probably not, but we didn’t go hungry, and my food budget was given a little reprieve.

Being open to food in this way has not only been smart for my budget, but it has made me a better and more creative cook. And it has shown that free food from someone else’s pantry isn’t necessarily bad.

I am a Disney Princess

I had an odd epiphany the other day in which I realized that I am, in fact, my favorite Disney Princess. Cinderella has always been my favorite princess. I gravitate towards her in every iteration. But it dawned on me recently that I probably love her so much because I relate to her in many ways.

Cinderella was raised by a step-parent who always put their own kids high above her; a step-parent who, despite Cinderella doing everything she was told to do perfectly down to the finest detail, never thought she did anything right. A step-parent who only acknowledged Cinderella's value when it benefited them and their image.

I am Cinderella. Her step-parent is my step-parent. Her struggles to be accepted for real and not show are my struggles. The striving to do perfectly even though you know it will never be good enough…that’s me, or at least it was until a few years ago.

My prince charming didn’t whisk me away to a castle, but he did help to build a home where I am able to breathe and feel loved. He helped create a space where I could find an amazing therapist that helped me to think, heal, and feel the validation that I deserve to have after 30 years of being told that I was ungrateful and couldn’t do anything right, even when I did what I was told down to the letter.

Just as I have been able to heal my wounds and feel loved and valued enough that I am happy and confident in my choices, I like to think that Cinderella was able to find that too. I like to think that her Happily Ever After was filled with breaking generational cycles of the negative household she grew up in. I think she would be the one to acknowledge the birthdays and life events of the castle servants because she knows how overlooked they can be. And I think she would have raised children who knew they were loved and valued, even in their mistakes. 

I don’t have a castle, and Cinderella may not have a therapist, but I think that if moving away and building a new life worked for me, then it probably worked for her too.

Cookbooks

There is something nostalgic and self-reflective about revisiting my old cookbooks that have been gathering dust on my shelf. Recently I decided to flip through them. As I went through I found notes I had written marking recipes that had once been favorites. I saw recipes with new eyes and taste buds as our eating habits have changed over time. Things that I had looked over before are now things that I want to try.

As the kids have grown, and life experiences have happened, we have been able to expand horizons and discover new tastes we enjoy. Up until our son was about 8 years old, appetizers never fit into our meal plan, and now we regularly make them at home or order them when we’re out. Living and traveling in Europe for three years introduced us to cheeses we have grown to love and are now staple finds in our fridge.

But the old favorites come back into view as well. The recipe for graham crackers that my son loved so much that he picked it for his contribution to his preschool classroom cookbook. Or the Jewish recipes that have introduced me to parts of my culture that I knew nothing about.

Food has become a way for me to share new experiences and new knowledge with my family and myself. And now that I see some new things in our old books, it is like getting a new cookbook all over again.