[Sailor Steve]

I keep complaining to myself that I'm not reading anything. Back when I was homeless I kept posting here about all the books I was reading at our huge downtown library - on average at least one book every day, sometimes more. And when I got to a big book like the seven-volume work Jefferson the Virginian, I might take two or even three for each volume.

Now? Nothing. After almost a year I still haven't finished reading Herodotus, plus the hundred or more books I got when I worked at the book distributor's warehouse, and that's twenty years ago now.

Then I realized what I have been reading. All the details about the World War I u-boats and other naval warfare. All the books about World War I air combat. Currently? Well, in preparation for the '100 Years' thread I've been reading online the complete Secretaries' notes from the Paris Peace Talks of 1919. I've been complaining that the '100 Years' is killing me. I sometimes spend as much as six hours just reading and rereading, compiling and sorting and editing and finally posting, and I've been doing that much work pretty much every day since the anniversary of Bloody April in 2017.

And while I hate that it's taking away from other things I want to be doing, I also realized that I'm still having fun. I'm truly amazed at how much I enjoy reading the daily notes from the most important meetings with the most important people of that time. How they influenced each other and the rest of the world. How they struggled to be civil when sometimes they thought they had the answers and ended up admitting that the one they disagreed with might be right.

So yeah, I've been reading a lot. It's just not what I planned on reading. Sometimes I have to remind myself that it's still good, and it's still enjoyable.