I’m not sure who I want to be when I grow up, let alone what I want to do.  But what I do know is that for now I want to explore who I can be in this time and in this place.  One of the doors I might want some day is to continue with my formal education, either through courses at a community college, another master’s degree, or perhaps that doctorate gauntlet.  To try and keep the doors open, while also enjoying my current space, I decided to create a type of syllabus on reading for pleasure.

The people in the real world (sorry Facebook, you’re not a real boy yet) that I’ve shared this idea with have definitely given me a smile and laugh that I believe God created just in my honor.  It’s a lovely mixture of you’re nuts / that’s cute / there might be some logic there.  So feel free to LOL at this schedule, then take what nuggets of potential you’d like.

Basically I’m rotating between four different types of books:

• Christian – history, cultural studies, philosophy, etc
• Running – may expand to exercise in general later
• Dante – because my thesis project involved too much skimming and not enough depth
• Other – including fiction or just books that don’t fit into the other categories

This nice circle of reading (or perhaps chain of reading…HIMYM anyone?) gives me balance and works well with my internal ADHD and OCD forces that hate boredom and enjoy structure as long as its self-imposed.  I’ve just finished my first cycle and am loving it so far.  I’m also starting to go for walks before work in the morning which means I’m getting to read twice a day and multi-task with the physical and mental fitness areas.

So there you go, Meg’s RD 101: “Reading for Pleasure in the August 2011 season”