book anxiety

When I feel anxious, I feel there must be a reason why I feel anxious. My mind is particularly good at finding something to ruminate about. The mind searches and sticks on to some minor thing like Velcro and no matter how mismatched the magnitude of my anxiety and the tiny thing I am obsessing over, it's virtually impossible to get unstuck. Well, my anxiety over books is a bit different. It's more of an ongoing anxiety. It's always there to some extent: sometimes I feel it acutely, sometimes dully. Anyway, I feel anxious that I will run out of things to read.

Okay, I need to explain this. I am not worried that I will read everything ever written or everything ever written that is worthy of reading. It's more like I am worried that I will find myself on the train without anything to read because I finished the book I was reading. Then I will have to actually bring myself into the real world and possibly interact with other human beings. So I always have something to read with me: books, newspapers, magazines. I worry about this before leaving the house: do I have enough pages on me? And I worry about things like: are my reading material the right size, are the pretty, do i feel comfortable with it today and does it go with my outfit?

Another one of my constant worries involves the ratio of read and unread books on my bookshelves. Having too many unread books makes me feel guilty. I start having thoughts like: why aren't I reading more? Am I lazy and unproductive? But when there are too few unread books, I worry that I will read all the books I own and then what will I read? What will I look forward to reading? And when all the possibilities in unread books, some of which will be wonderful and some undoubtedly disappointing, are gone, will I die?

Of course the optimal ratio or read to unread books is subjective and highly dependent on my mood. When I feel tired, there seem to be too many unread books on my shelves and ohmygod I have so many other books I want to read and there are just too many books to be read. But when I feel unusually productive and hopeful, I feel as if I will run out of things to read in a week.

So I worry on and on about the ratio. I can alleviate my anxiety in many ways but the best one for now is to get more books. That may result in higher percentage of unread books, but I'd rather own books and play with them and anticipate when to read the books than to worry about running out of the pages to read. Much better to be lazy and unproductive than to lose the possibilities, I think.

Thanks to Natalie for helping me out: the Russian lit books you sent me are fabulously beautiful to look at. I look forward to reading them and I enjoy fretting over just when I will read them.