Log In Sign Up

The board · New York · Curious

I read this board for six months before making a profile

Posted as six_months_of_reading, 1 September 2026

Looking for
one honest conversation with somebody experienced
Experience
None. A great deal of reading and no doing.
Around
Queens, New York

I have been reading posts like this one since January without an account, on a browser, in an incognito window, like somebody researching a medical symptom. This is the first thing I have written. I have rewritten it four times and each version was less honest than the last, so this is the fourth one and I am sending it before I can improve it again.

Forty five, Queens, divorced two years, no experience of anything in this world. What I have is a very clear sense that something has been missing and a very unclear sense of what it is. Six months of reading has taught me the vocabulary and almost nothing else.

What I want is one honest conversation with somebody who has been doing this for years and can tell me what it is actually like on an ordinary Tuesday. Not the intense version. The maintenance version. Whether it takes up a lot of your life. Whether people are as careful as the posts suggest.

I am not looking for a dynamic today. I might not be looking for one this year. I would like to stop being a person who reads about things.

Not looking for anyone who wants to skip straight to arranging something. Not looking to be told my age is unusual here, because I already know and it is part of why this took six months. Not looking for a person who is bored of explaining, which is entirely fair, and I will not take it personally.

Reply to this post Replies go through your account, not this page. Nothing you send is published here.

What to have sorted before you reply

If this one reads like your own head rather than somebody to answer, the tactics can wait. These three all happen before there is a first match to get wrong.

Also in New York

Every post in New York →

Reading is free. Answering needs an account.

Put one of your own where people near you will read it, and answer the ones already up.

Open the app Already have an account? Log in