JANUARY 14, 2025
If you follow my social media channels, or the updates on my writing site, you’ve probably noticed a shift in my typical content. For a few years, I had focused primarily on nature photography, camping content, and videos of my trail walks. The change becomes obvious back in September. I decided to post a recap of the reading I’d done that month because I’d spent a good deal of time in the books. I did a quick write-up and recorded a video to post to my socials. It was fun, and friends told me that they liked the recommendations. I decided to keep going with it.
For October, I set a theme for my reading. Because it’s the month of Halloween, I would stick to books in the horror genre or that had elements thereof. Instead of waiting until the end of the month to cover all of them, I opted to start sharing my updates weekly. That way, if others wanted to pick up anything I recommended, they had a chance to get to it before the holiday had passed. By that point, I was completing two books per week on average. Trying to cover everything in a single video would have made it quite a lengthy one.
Now, every single Monday, I release a written post and accompanying video recapping how I spent another week in the books. I share it across five different social media platforms and my own website.
I’d Fallen Out of the Habit
As a kid, I was a voracious reader. At any period of my life, I always knew that reading was a favored pastime of mine, but there was a stretch of a few years where I hardly picked up any books. I never stopped reading entirely. Every day I’d read articles and opinion pieces. Short-form fiction felt a lot easier if I could put it on a screen. Serial fanfiction also felt less intimidating because it came in pieces. I also consumed stories in other ways. I found television shows, video games, and podcasts with narratives and characters that were equally fascinating to those in some of my favorite books. That’s probably why it took me so long to realize how far I’d drifted from my prior novel-reading habits.
There was a vague sense that something was missing, and I would occasionally feel guilt when I saw the unread books in my collection. It always felt like there was something that had to be done first. For a long while, the only time I read more than a chapter was while I was camping. All my cares melt away when I’m camping, and when I’m in the trees it feels like I have all the time in the world. It’s when I’m at my happiest. That’s why the natural world is such a heavy focus for me and it’s plastered all over my web presence.

Out of the Woods and In the Books
Then, toward the end of summer last year, I took my cat Callie to the vet and discovered my concerns about her health were justified. From then on, she would need medication every night, and I was the only person she would tolerate enough to administer them. That meant my travelling and any plans for far-flung camping adventures became subject to an immediate and indefinite hiatus.
I love her, and it was a sacrifice I was willing to make. Still, being stuck in the same place every night brought on a pervasive restlessness almost immediately. Without my favorite stress outlet, daily life started taking a much bigger toll on me. This was when I noticed an increase in habits like doomscrolling. It doesn’t feel particularly restful nor enjoyable to me, yet I’ll get caught up and end up losing time to it anyway. It wasn’t the first bad habit I’d decided to drop. I returned to techniques that had helped me before. I even wrote a blog post about it and the changes I had to make. The post included a screenshot of a spreadsheet I made showing activities I could do instead.
One of those activities was reading.
A Growing Habit
At first, I set a goal of reading five pages per day. That takes roughly five minutes for me on average. I would allow myself to take days off here and there as well. However, once I started, the goal was essentially superfluous. It’s a rare day now when I read fewer than 40 pages, and the days off don’t happen.
Reading became the default replacement for the doomscrolling habit. Reading doesn’t require the same level of mental energy as many of the other activities on my list. Pulling a book out of my pocket is as easy as taking out my phone. I could be standing in line at the grocery store. As long as I have a paperback with me, I can easily read a few paragraphs in a book instead of scrolling. At the end of the day, I feel better.
I didn’t expect how well it could fulfill my desire for adventure, either. Of course, it isn’t a perfect substitute for travel. I still want to see so much more of the world and I make future plans with vague dates as a way to fantasize. For now, it helps a lot. When I open a book and scan my eyes across a page, I’m transported. I get to be somewhere else and someone else until I have to put the book back down. In my estimation, that has to be the next best thing to seeing such wonder and variety in person. It’s certainly often safer – at least for the type of books that I’m usually reading.

In the Books AND In the Trees
I don’t know how much longer Callie is going to be with me. The vet needs to fully sedate her in order to perform testing and check the progression of her illness. That’s more than we want to put her through when we don’t have to. I know she’s getting more tired, and she feels more fragile.
I know I’m going to miss her a lot when she’s gone, and that my grieving process often involves an isolation period. The best place for me to do that tends to be camping in the woods. Without any medications to administer, that will be something I can do again. My other cat doesn’t care so much about who gives her food and snuggles in the evening. It doesn’t have to be me every night.
When the time comes, I’ll be heading back into the woods again. I’ll be bringing my books still, and I’ll keep reporting back with my weekly recaps.