So Many Challenges!

Now that I've made my own reading challenge I seem to be finding them everywhere! It's not a bad thing, though. I made my own because I wanted one that was customized to my own goals, and strengths, and motivations. and even though I'm coming across lots of other challenges none of them are quite what I need from a reading challenge. Mostly because they involve other people. Maybe I should change the name of mine to the Extreme Introvert Reading Challenge.

See, I've found that making a thread on a message board and knowing that other people may or may not be following my progress does nothing to motivate me. In fact it's more the opposite. If I feel pressured to do/finish a challenge I'm more likely to quit. It's like if you tell me I have to do something, even if it's something I was going to do anyway, even if it's something I want to do, the second I feel like I have to do it I'm going to quit. I don't take being told what to do very well.

So, doing it on my own, with no pressure, no one watching, no one but me caring if I fail or not, works best for me.

I did create a thread in a group on LibraryThing. Just in case I find I'm needing some motivation, I have a place I can go get it. The groups is called Reading Our Own Tomes (ROOTs) and its all people who are basically trying to do what I'm doing; read the books I already own. I don't know if I'll ever go back and update my thread or not but within an hour of posting it I had several very encouraging/welcoming replies.

I'm in a few GoodReads groups also and one of them has challenges for just about everything. It's called Coffee & Books. They have a challenge for how many group reads you do, how many books in general, they even have a section where you can make up your own challenge. I thought about doing a thread there but there are literally thousands of people in that group. The LibraryThing group only has 70. I'll stick with the smaller group.

There are also all kinds of 'Reading Challenge' posts popping up on my Pinterest. Those ones are interesting, and I can see using one if I really can't decide what to read at some point, but they kind of go along with the 'once I feel like I have to do it...' thing, at least for me anyway. I start reading one of them and my brain goes 'read a book I should have read in high school? I hated high school. This list sucks.' And then I'm back with having nothing to read.

I'd like to say that one day I'll feel comfortable enough to do a challenge with other people. I even started to type out that 'one day I'll have my shit together enough to do one of those other challenges' but you know what? It's not about having my shit together or not. It's about knowing myself well enough to know I will probably never do one of those. I'll never be posting on message boards about my successes and struggles, I'll never be checking off little boxes on a nifty printable from some popular reading blog. That's just not me. And that's okay.