Finishing a book gives you so much joy
I skipped the writing for yesterday and the day before. I realize that's not a good look. After all, I talked up a storm in the few notes gone by; almost as if it was just me in the world who had discovered how crucial writing is. Nonetheless, the only thing worse than breaking a habit (I have painfully learnt) is stopping it wholesale. So here I write and continue again.
The day before yesterday, I finished Frankenstein. I sat down on a chair in Harvard square, the weather was delightful, and I paced myself fully through volume 2 to the end of the book from ~5:30pm to 8:30 pm. Having finished the book, I am reminded of why the classics are considered as so. I also remembered how pure of an enjoyment the act of reading is. It's very different from any other kind of entertainment that you consume; mostly because the reader has to do as much as the writer (at least for the great works and that is true of Frankenstein).
Shelley and the story, despite the small flaws they had, shone tremendously for me. I am considering a longer review of the book. I am currently making my way through Paradise Lost and I feel like a review drawing and synthesizing from both of them would be a valuable approach.
As with my relationship with writing, I have become much less of a reader than I use to be. I hope these sparks of excitement with reading can sustain itself to become a big strong blaze. Interestingly, I think a way to approach such habitual formation is something I found reading the introduction to Padmakara's translation of the Bodhicaryavatara or the The Way of the Bodhisattva. In it they lay out one of the famous outline of the text which is based on this famous prayer.
May bodhicitta, precious and sublime, Arise where it has not yet come to be; And where it has arisen may it never fail But grow and flourish ever more and more.
Not limiting ourselves to the scope of bodhicitta (lol), we can abstract out the three strategies that are laid out here for anyone to get integrated into any X. Those are, the strategy to make the X (or the interest in X) arise net new. Once arisen, the strategy to go full on offense and never to lose ground on the interest in X. Once the safeguards are there to not lose grounds on X, strategy to do full kingdom building with X.
This, I think could be a good way to adopt new habits. Only one way to find out.