About a year ago I posted some very interesting stats about my blogging habits. Basically, I discovered that I get into these awful reading/blogging slumps at certain times in the year. For some reason, reading slumps always coincide with blogging slumps... always. That is how I am able to track my reading slumps: when I don’t post a lot on the blog. Well, in that same post I posed a very interesting question for myself:
Why are Spring and Fall such a common time for me to take an impromptu blogging hiatus? Why is it during these times of year that I fall into reading slumps?
It only took me a year to figure it out, but I finally discovered why!
Lets rewind to earlier this year when I fell into another blogging/reading slump. It started in April and it really hit me in May. In June I still wasn’t posting much but I had finally gotten out of my reading slump thanks to Bleach, of all things. And I say this because manga was a new medium for me, but I am really enjoying it! So thank you Bleach! Just another reason to love it! Lol. (More on this later!)
Anyway, something I discovered about myself during my latest slump is that when I am not reading, I am binge watching something (and vice versa). At the beginning of the year I was doing really well with getting books read, but I fell behind in watching all of my shows. Come the reading slump in April and May and I caught up with all my shows (it also helped that the season finales aired around this time as well). I also watched some shows/movies on Netflix and I started on some new anime, including Bleach, which I watched for the first time in its entirety! And it was a looooong one!
Around June, on a group on Goodreads I was talking about how I was really wanting to get into anime more because I’d really only seen Death Note and all the Dragon Balls (even GT... yikes) and it was here where I was told that the last arc of Bleach was never adapted in the anime. Well, I super loved the show and I am a completionist, so I decided to dive into the manga starting with the last arc. It took my a couple of volumes to get used to this new medium because I found that I sort of skimmed over the artwork and before I knew it, some guy lost his arm and I didn’t even know when. Lol. I’ve read graphic novels in the past, so I think my main issue was that the art was in black and white. Anyway, I’m 10+ volumes in and I love it! This is what got me back reading this time.
However, I predict come September-November another slump will happen. Why? As you saw, last year I wondered that as well. But as soon as I sat down and started writing this post it came to me: in the Fall is when the shows start back up. And Spring? Well, that's when the shows end. Whether the slump or the shows comes first, I have no idea, but I am positive THAT is one of the reasons why I fall into these reading slumps! I am either binge reading or binge watching... there is no in between with me!
Or so I thought.
All this summer I’ve been doing really well with my reading. Here is a snapshot at what that has looked like so far.
Lots of Bleach. Just... Bleach everywhere! Lol. But I have been reading some other things here and there. At the moment I’m not reading Bleach... not because I don’t want to, because I really, really do! I just haven’t gotten the next volume from the library yet and I am DYING! Well, I was dying... until I started Cinder by Marissa Meyer. I am just over halfway done with Scarlet and I am in love! I adore this world, and more so, these characters! But that’s not all. I am also watching some stuff...
Yeah, I am kind of surprised at myself, too. This whole binge watching vs binge reading thing was something that dawned on me at the beginning of the summer when I stopped watching the Bleach anime and started on the manga. It seemed like it was always one or the other. But maybe that's not true? This summer I have watched a bunch of dumb, summer-y SyFy movies (6-Headed Shark Attack anyone? Lol) and some anime! I started re-watching Bleach because I’m obsessed and don’t judge me. Lol. But I’m also half way through The Devil is a Part-Timer, and I watched season one of One Punch Man (it’s SO good!) and I am like 3 episodes away from finishing season 2! Who even am I balancing all this media?? Lol.
Will this balance last? I honestly don’t think so, if my stats are to indicate anything. Lol. But one can hope! However, maybe not being able to balance both these things is not that bad a thing. Maybe I just need a break from reading to watch some mindless TV. Or maybe I don’t want to watch anything and I’d rather engage my brain with some reading.
But the thing remains... It’s quite interesting that my reading slumps happen most often in the Spring when shows end, and in the Fall when shows begin...
Hmmm... it will be interesting to see if, come October, you can keep up the balance of watching AND reading/blogging. I definitely see my reading go way down when I'm really into a show, so I can understand this.
ReplyDeleteNicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction
Well, I am here to tell you that it did come... late August, but still. Although it may have just been because I was really into just reading The Lunar Chronicles and I just wanted to do nothing else besides that. Lol.
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