Whenever someone asks me what my hobbies are or if I have to write a quick paragraph on myself that lists my interests, there is always something that will pop up right next to sports, working out, social media, and travel. Reading of course. Just as parents will usually pass on their habits to their kids, I grew up in a house that treasured reading. My parents always (and still to this day) had a book in their hand and they made sure I followed suit. Their effort did not go in vain.
I am not some book worm who spends all of my free time engulfed in some 1,000 page fantasy as I walk from place to place but I do read as much as possible. Books, newspapers and blogs receive a lot of attention from me. I am always in the middle of at least one book, I subscribe to two newspapers, and I have certain blogs that I have to read every day. However, there is one type of reading that I might do a little more than others.
Now I do hate to admit this because I know this is not the type of reading that intellectuals give much respect to but I love magazines. I love them so much that I currently subscribe to ten different ones. Making sure that I don’t get too sucked into one certain area, I try to diversify my magazine reading repertoire. I subscribe to the following journals: Sports Illustrated, ESPN the Magazine, GQ, Details, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Fortune, Money, Men’s Health, and Men’s Fitness.
While it is nice getting something in the mail pretty much every single day*, the numerous magazine subscriptions can get overwhelming at times. How so you ask? Let me lay out the three reasons for you:
1. Content overload: I would be lying if I said I read every single magazine issue I get from front to back. In fact, sometimes I don’t get the chance to skim through certain issues at all. I usually read my magazines at dinner time. I will get home after a long day at work and eat and read. I will then move onto other stuff (blog, journal, watch sports…sometimes a social life). So on days where I have four magazines waiting for me when I get home** certain ones will get overlooked. I just can’t keep up and I feel bad.
2. Renewal/Junk annoyances: When you subscribe to a certain publication they are going to do whatever they can to keep you as a subscriber. To them that means sending you renewal notices and offers pretty much the day after give them the money for your initial subscription. Not exaggerating, after I signed on for a year with Time, the next week they were sending me notices trying to get me to sign on for an additional year. Magazines send out 1st renewal notices, 2nd renewal notices, 3rd renewal notices, 4th renewal notices, 5th renewal notices…etc. etc. It gets really annoying. Not only that, but mostly every magazine you subscribe to is under the umbrella of a company that publishes numerous other magazines. The company of the magazine(s) that you subscribe to believes you will be interested in all of their other fantastic magazines as well so they send you junk mail offer after junk mail offer on all the other mags you are missing out on. Multiply all of these renewal notices and new magazine offers by ten and you got what I (and my poor roommates) deal with.
3. Hoarders’ Paradise: When you get the volume of magazines that I get on a weekly basis, they start to add up. I usually take my mail down to my room. I have two magazine piles. First pile is for the ones I have not looked at/not read and the second pile is for the ones I have read/looked at/have no interest in. It takes very little time for that second pile to grow taller and taller. As someone who tries to be tidy when it comes to my room/car/bathroom (notice I did not say my office), having a big stack of magazines should not appeal to me. But for some reason I have a tough time throwing them out. About six months ago I finally put my foot down and got rid of the huge mountain of magazines I had accumulated over the course of about a year. I threw them all into big plastic garbage bags and disposed of them in a dumpster in a parking lot at a softball complex by our house because I was too embarrassed to fill our garbage can with a million different magazines. Well, it is time for me to get rid of a significant amount of magazines once again but this time I want to go at it in a different manner.
A pile of magazines in my room (I have more than this)
Rather than dispose of my various magazines into a random dumpster, I want to call on my readers to see if any of you have any use for an assortment of great magazines. You will have to come to my house to get them but it should be worth it if you are in the need for collage making pictures or just good reading material. Reach out to me by text, phone, e-mail, Twitter, or Facebook. Happy reading everyone! Don’t Blink.
* – As I wrote in a previous post, I love getting mail.
**- These multiple magainze issue days usually occur on Mondays.
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