In my entire time tracking books on goodreads, over years and years of logging every single thing I read, I’ve only ever marked nine books as “did not finish.” Nine. Total. I’m the person who pushes through. If a book is slow to start, I convince myself to stick with it, tell myself it’ll pick up, and most of the time it does.
Then Spring 2026 happened, and I DNF’d four books in six weeks.
Some Luck by Jane Smiley (Audio). It sounded like a cool premise. Every chapter covers a different year, Depression-era Iowa, generational family saga. But I just couldn’t get into it. The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy (also Audio). It came so highly recommended but it just never grabbed me. Flights by Olga Tokarczuk (once again Audio). I really wanted to love that one, and parts of it did inspire me, but I couldn’t get myself to finish it. I did wonder if Julia Whelen’s narration started earlier in the book if I’d have been able to fight through, but I didn’t make it that far. And now A Crown of Ivy and Glass by Claire Legrand (Kindle), a fantasy that should be right in my wheelhouse. I love that whole world of ACOTAR, Fourth Wing, Throne of Glass, Divine Rivals, The Knight and the Moth. But the main female character just didn’t land for me, and I called it at about 20% in.
Four books in six weeks, from someone who almost never quits.
At first I did what I always do. I made excuses. Maybe I’m just tired, maybe I need to read in bigger chunks instead of a few pages before bed, maybe the next chapter will be the one that hooks me. But at some point you have to stop blaming the books.
Because it wasn’t just the books.
Around the same time, I started half-assing my workouts. My friend and I work out together every morning at 5 AM and we’ve done that for years, but lately we’ve been waking up at five, looking at each other, and going to get coffee instead. When we do stay in the gym, we’re just going through the motions, lifting lighter, cutting sets short, not really caring.
And it’s not just the gym either. I’ve been shorter with my youngest son, more irritated with my husband, less interested in things that used to light me up. I had all these plans to get back into painting, something I studied in college, and I wanted to learn how to sew because my daughter makes the most incredible thrifted and upcycled clothes. She’d been sewing me all these cool things, but it was eating into time she could’ve spent on her own projects, and I kept thinking, I can learn to do this myself. I started both of those things and then just...didn’t dig in.
Everything felt like I was standing in the shallow end of something I used to dive into.
Here’s what I think is actually going on.
My middle son left for college last fall. When my daughter left four years ago, I still had two boys at home keeping me busy, and I knew she’d always keep in touch because that’s just who she is. She’s the eldest daughter, she calls, she texts, she tells me about her week without me having to ask. My son is not like that. I’m the one reaching out to him, and he really only calls when he needs something or has a question. I love that he’s independent, I really do, but I miss our heart-to-hearts. With my daughter leaving, I didn’t have time to sit with the quiet because the house and the schedule were still full. But when it went from three kids to one, and that one is a teenager who’d rather be with his friends than hang out with his parents, and is involved in fewer weekend activities that require our attendance, the house got really still.
Suddenly it was just me and my husband. Going on dates because we could. Sitting by the pool we put up last summer because we were finally around on weekends. Reading on the deck in my favorite hammock swing with a drink. Going on more walks and bike rides. And all of it felt weird. Not bad, just unfamiliar, like I was wearing someone else’s schedule.
I’ve never had this much unstructured time in my adult life (that I can remember, anyway). My days used to be dictated by what my business needed from me and what my family needed from me, with no gap in between. Now there’s a gap, and I don’t know what to do with it.
My workout friend is going through the exact same thing. Same stage of life, same feelings, same fog. She has a son who just left for college, one kid left at home, and her husband is driving her up the wall too. We’ve talked about all of it: the health stuff that comes with being women in our 40s, the monotony of the same routine every day (wake up, work out, work, cook dinner, go to bed, repeat), the absolute soul-crushing cycle of “what are we having for dinner tonight.”
We don’t know if it’s hormonal, or the empty nest thing creeping in early, or just the season of life where everything you built starts shifting underneath you and you haven’t found your footing yet.
But we both know it’s real. And knowing someone else feels it too makes it a little less scary.
The thing I keep coming back to is this. I tried painting, I tried sewing, I tried the pool, I tried giving myself permission to just relax for the first time in twenty-plus years. None of it stuck.
The only thing that stuck is this. Reading and writing.
And I think I know why. Painting is beautiful and sewing is creative, but neither one makes you sit with what you’re actually feeling. You can paint for three hours and never once confront the thing that’s bugging you. You can sew a whole dress and come out the other side exactly where you started emotionally. (Does it hurt the potential for emotional development that during both painting and sewing I’m typically listening to an audiobook? Possibly, but I can’t imagine not.)
But writing? Writing forces you to name it. To say “I think I’m in a slump and I don’t know why” and then keep typing until you figure out that it’s not about the books or the gym or the dinner rotation. It’s about the fact that your life is changing in ways you didn’t plan for, and you haven’t caught up yet. I used to journal constantly when I was growing up, filling notebooks with whatever was in my head, and I didn’t realize until way later in life how therapeutic that was for me. This writing project feels like a return to that, like I’m finally doing the thing that actually helps me process again.
Reading does something similar. When I’m deep in a book, I’m processing. I’m feeling things through characters and stories that help me understand my own. And when I can’t connect to a book, maybe it’s because I’m too disconnected from myself to connect to anything.
So here’s my question for you. And I actually want to know.
If you’re an avid reader, someone who reads across genres and styles and never stays in one lane for long, have you ever noticed that your reading slumps line up with slumps in the rest of your life? That when you can’t finish a book, it’s because something bigger is off?
And if so, how did you get out of it? Not just the reading slump, but the life slump. Because I’m starting to think they might be the same thing.
I went through something similar. Thought it was just my kids getting older and peri/menopause. Turns out I have a whole host of autonomic things going on! I agree with you so much that for readers, a slump or DNFs can be your first clue that something deeper is going on.
Thank you for writing this because I'm going through the exact same thing! My son moved out three years ago, I'm single, my job ended in December 2025, and I suddenly have so much more time than I ever thought I would in 30 years. The only things that have stuck for me, too, are reading and writing. Writing is forcing me to confront issues/situations from my past, but at the same time is allowing me to explore my thoughts on my shifting world and chart some new paths.
I have noticed I get into a reading slump when life slumps. The fuller and busier my life is, the more energy I have, the more easily I'm able to lock into reading. The less I have going on, the more quickly I am bored with books. I also have noticed an inability to focus during these times. Sounds counter-intuitive, I guess, but I thrive when I have more going on. I also have a difficult time DNF-ing a book because, thanks to my perfectionist qualities, I almost feel as if I'm failing in part, so I've powered through some really bad books in my life. What has helped me get out of my slump is to get active in various ways. I've started my Substack, am working on starting a podcast with friends, walk/run daily; I usually have family stuff going on once a week. By doing this, it makes me want to reach for my book at night or in the morning because I have more energy. However, it didn't happen for me overnight and there are still days where I struggle a bit. I guess that's just part of me still finding my footing.