Restless

Reading makes me anxious. Especially when I am reading something I haven't read before. If I don't know where the plot is going, I get all wound up. Unable to relax and enjoy the book, I find myself wrenching the book from my gaze and putting it down, if only temporarily, to find something else to do. It's like I can't handle being so completely immersed in the world that the book has created. I have to remind myself of who I am again, and try to do something normal to prove it. But I can only stay away so long before my curiosity gets the better of me.

That is how I feel today. On the one hand, I know there are things I need to be doing, accomplishing today. It is my catch up day for laundry, dishes and cleaning. But I am drawn to that book. And then, when I have immersed myself in it for a little while, I have to come up for air, and remind myself that my life is here. So I put it down, and pick up a project that has been waiting for my attention, but I am only able to concentrate for so long before my mind strays back to the plot, the characters and what might happen next.

I find myself in a restless cycle of wanting to read and then wanting to stop, my brain constantly spinning, wondering, thinking. I ebb and flow with each activity, trying to get a little bit done before I am pulled back to the book by its gravitational pull.

Am I the only one who feels this way, who struggles with the push and pull that both fiction and non fiction have on me? Is this my heroin?