Top Ten Tuesday – Things Getting In The Way of Reading

I know my posting has been choppy recently, and there are both reading and non-reading reasons for this. The reading reason was that I basically had a ton of review copies to get through, and I had to read them to post about them. So when I slowed down or had books to focus on for insta…yeah, that did, unfortunately, slow my posting down.

But now I’m back, and seeing as this week’s Top Ten Tuesday was a list of reasons you’ve not been reading…I thought this sounded like a good starting point, ha! There won’t be ten reasons on here, as I don’t want to go into the minutiae of housework and job hunting, but a few things have distracted me.

The Top Ten Tuesday tag was initially created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now held over on The Artsy Reader Girl. It’s a weekly tag where everyone is given a bookish prompt for bloggers to curate a top ten list. You can then share your blog post on The Artsy Reader Girl’s post for that week. Just remember to check out and comment on other people’s blog posts too!

Now, let’s get into those reasons!

Gardening

I hate things like gardening, I’m not gonna lie. I like being outside, but I prefer to be out in nature. Or at least in places looked after by other people. But we have a garden, and it’s nice to be in it during the summer. As the days get warmer and longer, that will be a more attractive prospect, so I am glad the garden work is done.

Basically, my sister was holding an event in our garden, so we spruced it up earlier in the year than we usually would. It took a few days, as the rain kept causing havoc, but we finished it.

Sadly, gardening didn’t mix well with the physical copies of books I had to read at the time, which slowed down some progress.

Gaming

Apparently, I’m all about the G’s. But, yes, I have been gaming. Mobile gaming, admittedly, but with the amount of time I’ve been grinding games, it counts.

I’m still really into Ensemble Stars, and I play three versions of the game. The rhythm game on the English server, the rhythm game on the Japanese server and the Japanese-only tap-game version. Then in the same week, I wanted the five-star cards for events on both the EN and JP servers. So yeah, when I wasn’t gardening – actually, when I was too, thanks to the autoplay feature on EN – I was grinding these games.

Thanks to this, I got through some audiobooks, so it’s not like I didn’t read at all. It’s just…I wasn’t getting through my review copies or owned TBR at all, and yeah…

I want to say now those events are over, I’m back to not really playing again. But I decided to do the following events for cards I care less about but would still like. I’m just not properly grinding or spending as much time on them. It’s still taking up some time, though…oops.

Roleplaying

I’ve spoken about rping on here before, but it’s something that I hadn’t been doing properly for a few years now. I love roleplaying online, it’s been a big hobby of mine since I was a kid, but it’s something you very much have to what to put the time into.

So back at the beginning of April, I decided to give it a go again, and I’m having the time of my life.

I’m roleplaying a fandom character online; I have some AUs I’m obsessed with and building some fun character relationships. My character got to punch someone I hate too recently, so that was a joyous occasion.

But I won’t lie; I have been getting distracted checking my phone when I’m supposed to be reading. Admittedly, most of my partners this time are around more during the day than in the evening. So I should have plenty of reading time. And when I get a job, I’ll reply to stuff in the evening from the day and then sign off for the night. So it shouldn’t distract me from reading as much as it has…

Oh well.

Youtube

My final reason is that I’ve been trying Youtube again. I’ve posted about it here and have posted another video since. I’m still trying to decide whether to keep it up or not, as it does take up a lot of time.

Even when you don’t care about posting weekly or whatever.

I’ve not got any videos in mind right now, but it’s definitely a distraction when I choose to work on something. So I want to keep that in mind and try to only make videos when I don’t have much else going on. Or at least don’t have priority reads.

Getting Back Into Reading

Those are the four reasons I haven’t been reading, but I’m hoping I’m on the other side of that now. I have a bunch of books on my TBR that I actually want to pick up and read so that definitely helps.

Hopefully, the reading mojo is back, as it is admittedly difficult to write for a bookish blog when you’re not exactly reading…