Lesson: Congratulations! You’ve reached the end of ‘The Focused Reader’ 30-Day Challenge, a significant accomplishment towards building a more focused reading habit. Let’s take a moment to review your achievements over the past week and celebrate your success. In the last several days, you’ve embraced the core mantra of our community – ‘Read Slowly –Continue reading Day 30 – Claim your badge because you earned it!
I enrolled in the 30-Day Focused Reader Challenge Course because I value reading, and I value learning. Eddie’s course description addressed both interests.
When I retired, I wanted to fill my time with activities that I genuinely enjoyed, so I began to read a lot of books, and I kept track of what I read, the titles, authors, dates read, and so forth. As I complete these 30 days, I am certain that my view of reading and my reading behavior have both changed. I’ve learned to slow down and engage more fully with what the author was saying and what meaning I could gain from it. This type of focus and depth of purpose in reading is new to me.
I would not have changed if I had not taken the course. Like with so many other activities, I had made reading books a competition with myself. Could I read more books this year than last year? Could I stick with a book that was difficult to read? However, reading in that style left me frequently unable to remember core concepts, or themes, or characters in the fiction or non-fiction that I had read.
I had always taken notes when reading, so I had previously begun to keep a reading journal, where I summarized the books, and kept character names and roles, etc. This activity was to help me recall details of what I had been reading. The strategy was good for tracking and keeping the data about what I called my reading “hobby.” The Oxford dictionary defines a hobby as an activity done regularly in one’s leisure time for pleasure. As I completed the assignments and did the readings of the books I had chosen for this course, I began to realize that what I value about reading is much more than engaging in a hobby. I realized that I want my reading to help me learn and grow as a thinker and a discerning person. This goal includes both reading for pleasure and learning from what I read. I realized I wanted more from my reading. I wanted meaning.
While taking this course, I became clear that what I wanted from reading was to find personal significant beyond just the story or the information in a book. This might include better understanding of myself, others, and the world I live in; better ability to identify and express and communicate my emotions; better ability to conceptualize existential questions; better sense of support, hope, or encouragement; newer ways to look at life and my own world view.
Achieving the Badge that signifies completing this course means to me that I stayed the course with a difficult task and did the work. As a result, I have become a changed person as it relates to how I view the purpose of reading books and the value to be derived.