The year after I graduated college, I read Ulysses.

I had always been more of a reader in my ambitions than in actuality. I tried to tackle Don Quixote and Moby Dick before high school, burning out rapidly on both. All through childhood I would abandon books, half-read, for months, years, or forever.

In college, after finding myself reading less and less, I decided to make a point of it. During that renewed commitment, I got about half way through Ulysses. But eventually I put it down and simply did not pick it back up again.

The year after graduation, I bludgeoned my way through James Joyce’s epic at last. It felt like a victory. There was no need to explain or even recall it —  I could just let Joyce’s language wash over me, enjoying what I enjoyed, remembering what I remembered, for the sheer pleasure of the words and the satisfaction of having done a difficult thing.

Rarely, now, do I pick up a book and do not finish it. I read few books on a whim, if I’ve picked it up there is usually a good reason and therefore a good reason to soldier through. I do occasionally abandon books, but with an intentional finality, not the vague drifting away of my younger years.

The one thing that I have found remains difficult is making time to sit down and read a book in the first place. Particularly long or dense books take me weeks or months to finish. I may pick up a lighter read instead, or simply only read a few pages at night on the nights when I don’t scroll myself to sleep on Twitter. But there are so many good books, and not all of them are easy reading.

This year, my New Year’s resolution is to physically read books five hours a week. News articles do not count, no matter how literary, nor do audio books (although I enjoy them immensely). No, I have determined I will look at a page, in a book, for at least five hours.

This feels, admittedly, like a rather tame goal. It is most likely dwarfed by the time I spend on social media or watching television. And yet, a few weeks in, it has been a joy — a source of the same satisfaction as finally finishing Ulysses.

I find myself looking forward to setting my phone down and digging in for an hour at a time, staying up, perhaps, too late. I know I must carve out time for it, and the temptation to dawdle as I head to bed is dampened by the knowledge I still have an hour of reading to do. The reading list thus far has been dense, and yet I’m finishing books with ease. One night, finishing a rather brief novel with fifteen minutes to spare, I felt a nagging need to open up the next book in the stack and keep going.

This resolution is not my only one for the year, another is posting to the blog at least once a month. Last year, some time I had to use on the blog was taken up with other things, including other, rewarding creative pursuits. But just as I hope to read more good books this year than last year, I hope too to use this platform to share my thoughts with the empty void more frequently.

Happy New Year, all – here’s to the joys of discipline, and of finishing hard things well.