Finally, after a month, I started reading again. I don't have a good story here, one day was a week, and then almost a month, but in the blink of an eye I'd found the bookmark and picked up right where I left off. I wrapped up the last third of Strangers in Their Own Land, then polished off the final couple of essays in The Empathy Exams. Both good books, both recommended to those interested in their respective subject matter, and both topics for closer review when TOA returns to some kind of normalcy.
This isn't to suggest my eyes were functionally illiterate for the entire month. I had read, here and there, sometimes for an hour or more, but it just seemed like I was killing time. I knew I was back to reading when I decided on that first night to stop reading, a decision based mostly on a stray thought that if I didn't stop, I was putting myself at risk of running out of reading material. This is the kind of ridiculous thought familiar to my days as an excessive reader, and when it floated through my mind I felt like I had taken my first drink of water after a long walk through the desert.
