I don't want to get emotionally invested in stories.

At least, lately. And I'm not sure why.

I love a good story. I like writing good stories. So it confuses me when I gaze into the front page of a story that looks really promising, but can't bring myself to start the first chapter because of something as par for the course as emotional investment. What I mean by 'emotional investment' is, well, you know how there are, in any story with a decent plot, a few key parts where things move from good to worse, to worst, to better, to rock bottom, and then back to good again?

That bumpy downward slope gets me every time, and it doesn't matter what I'm reading because I empathise with characters too much. I feel what they feel, I dread how awful situations have to get before they have any hope of getting better.

On the face of it, that sounds like a really good thing. If I feel things when I read, then that means the author is doing his or her job - and that's completely and absolutely true. Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise, because a good author is someone who can really make you feel for their characters and their plot.

But it's really tiring.

It's not like I even read much. The last book I actually finished was back in September or so of 2012, and it was called Consider Phlebas, a sci-fi book by Iain M Banks. I enjoyed it, though its subject matter ended up rather depressing towards the end. I got half-way into the next book in Banks' 'Culture' series, The Player of Games, and by all accounts it has been very interesting, but I'm right at that point in the book where you can tell that things are about to go downhill rather sharply. So I stopped reading altogether, it seems.

If I read more often then I'd understand being burnt out on the sensation of an emotional rollercoaster, but as it stands, it's really unclear as to whether I'm just lazy and don't want to put the time and effort into reading a good story, or if everyone else feels like this too... and they push through it when I appear to be fucking lazy. Hah.

Is that all it is? Do we just accept the lurching sensations in our stomachs when things go horribly wrong in what we're reading? Just push through it to get to the end, and hopefully some kind of satisfying ending?

Hmmm.

I'll try and continue that book, I think. Right now.

Useless blog post #2?

:P