They were drawing me. The books.
It was like my car was on autopilot– I thought I was headed to Dunn Bros, but when I drove past it, I wasn’t surprised. Instead, I just let my car take me to Barnes and Noble.
It’s been a little while since I have been here. Now that I have a membership and have free shipping, I’ve been buying most of my books online. Today it wasn’t enough. I had to be with them, surrounded by them, which is why I am drinking a banana chocolate smoothie, typing on my laptop alone, but feeling like I am in the company of friends– or future friends.
To be honest, I feel a little overwhelmed. There are so many books I want to read, I don’t know when I’m going to find time to get to them all. I perused the “Summer Reading” table and found more that intrigued me. From where I sit, I can see the “New Fiction” shelves, and I wonder if I’ll ever have a book there.
I feel pulled so many ways. I want to readreadREAD, but I am trying to balance that out with plenty of time for writing, which I love even more. But my writing is informed and inspired by what I read, so I have to keep fueling that fire. Those two activities alone could keep me busy until I die, I think, and yet– I have even more important things in my life than these.
People. God.
I know everyone gets 24 hours a day, but I wish I could have more. How am I supposed to be a loving, caring daughter and friend while working fulltime and writing a novel and feeding an obsessive reading habit– all while never neglecting my true love Jesus Christ and his church?
Praise God that OCD is no longer demanding so much of my attention. How did I manage? It feels like a different lifetime.
And yet, I have friends who do all this and take care of a spouse and children. It boggles my mind.
I want my life to matter, want to leave a mark. It seems difficult to do when my interests are so spread– I worry that my efforts in each area will be lacking because I didn’t have enough time invested into each one.
I think that one of the reasons I decided to keep a list of books I have read and reviewed (click THE READER tab above) was to try to organize at least one part of my life. When I sit here in the bookstore, surrounded by all this brilliance, I know that there will be corners I never explore. Somehow maybe this will help me keep better control of the labyrinth I’m in.
And what a beautiful labyrinth.
JACKIE LEA SOMMERS 
I know exactly what you mean, and have felt that tension so often as well… for time to stop, to fully pursue one interest, then start again, stop again, pursue something else — read, write, dance, travel. I think what it\’s done for me is be my call to heaven, not as an escape from this world, but a perfection of this one, when we can finally pursue all those passions God has put in us without the unnatural constraint of time. So I think perhaps that tension will always be there — to remind us of Narnia, when we can finally go further up and further in. 🙂
Hannah
I nodded all the way through reading this post. Yep, that’s me! I wonder, too, how I can give proper due to all my passions and roles. I’m looking for ways to integrate, but it’s not easy.