a Year Without Books, Maybe

Everyone seems to have a theory about how to interact with books, from Kafka and his "frozen sea" to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - "Put down that book you're using as a shield."I'm turning 29 next week, which means I've got one year left before I'm thirty. Thirty is about five years away from senility and a wheelchair, according to my research. For most of my twenties, I've been an impressively compulsive reader. I have a dozen books I'm half-reading at any given time, and I'm on Amazon once a week filling up my shopping cart with more that I don't buy, or do and don't have time to read. I hear an interview with an author on NPR and decide their book is exactly what I need to understand my life at this precise moment, or I'm provoked after stumbling on a subject I had never considered before. I download four 'samples' from the Kindle store every other day and read them all,  collecting lists of things I want to read eventually.In journalism,  -30- is the mark to indicate a story's end. I have all kinds of dopey fantasies about what I'd like to accomplish before I cross that threshold. If I spent a year, from 29 to 30, without reading a single book, how would my life change? Would I even be able to do it? My mind reels at the prospect. How would I pass my time? But something important seems to be hidden in the task - I could come out of that year as a completely different person. Maybe I would find my own voice as a writer. Maybe I would meet more people, make more friends, go more places. Or maybe I'd become stupider, or uglier, or smellier.Self-regulation is supposed to be good for people. Seligman calls it out in 'Flourish' as one of the core 'character strengths.' The better we are at limiting ourselves and reducing the things we covet and that put us at ease, he says, the more we can improve in others areas of life. But does it apply to something as seemingly wholesome and prudential as reading books? Or is self-regulation only useful for vices, like flushing babies down the toilet, banana-flavored ice cream, or moustaches?In the few days I have left before my personal calendar resets itself, I'm going to seriously consider a year long sabbatical from book reading.