You are a reader. Yes, YOU, even if it took two full moons to finish a novella

At the end of every year, the same thing happens. Like clockwork, my social feeds turn into a literary Olympics. Suddenly everyone’s posting reading stats as if they’ve just returned victorious from Mount Everest holding a pack of bookmarks instead of climbing gear. There are pie charts. There are bar graphs. There are people who somehow—while presumably sleeping, working, raising kids, and occasionally eating—managed to read 147 books, 62 audiobooks, and a partridge in a pear tree.

And I sit there in my cozy corner of the internet, sipping my tea and thinking, Wow. That’s impressive.
And then immediately after that: How? When? Do these people have a personal time-turner? Is there a reading portal? A secret club? Should I be taking notes?

Meanwhile, a small voice inside me whispers, “You finished a novella this month. You’re doing great, sweetie.”

Here’s the thing no one tells you during the year-end reading frenzy: whether you read two books last year or two hundred, you are still absolutely, unquestionably, gloriously a reader.

If you only manage to read on vacation, stretched out blissfully in a beach chair with sunscreen in your eyebrows—you’re a reader. If the only uninterrupted moments you get are while folding laundry with an audiobook whispering sweet plot twists into your ear—you’re a reader. If it takes you thirty days, six cups of tea, one Papillon curled against your leg, and several "Wait… what page was I on again?" moments to finish a novella—you’re still a reader.

A reader isn’t measured by speed or quantity. A reader is someone who chooses a story, steps into it like it’s a warm cottage on a snowy night, and lets the characters move into their heart. A reader is someone who forms friendships with fictional people and maybe mutters at them in public, which is perfectly normal and absolutely not something I’ve ever done. Recently. Probably.

As a writer, I’m telling you a secret now. You may want to sit down.

Ready?

You—the person reading this in between a million other tasks, the person who borrows books, buys books, forgets books at the doctor’s office, listens to books in the car, reads one chapter a week, reads twenty chapters a night—you are the kind of person we writers hope and pray for.

You are the heartbeat of storytelling.

So don’t let year-end reading stats make you feel anything but proud of your own magical, quirky reading journey. Whether you’re a slow sipper, a binge reader, a once-a-year vacation devourer, or an audiobook lover who cleans the entire house fueled by a murder mystery—you're a reader. And I love you. Truly.

And so does Blueberry, who insists that any reader who gives attention to fictional animals is obviously good people.