The Pizza Hut BOOK IT! Program Is So Back

I have such fond memories of reading HUNDREDS of books every year. I would read in the car (not great for someone with motion sickness issues), I would read at my brother’s basketball games, I would read before and after dance class, I would read when I was supposed to be doing school work, I would read on our trampoline, I would crawl into the blanket fort I’d made under my bed and read more there.

While I recognize that comparing my childhood reading (and the subsequent amount of pizza I ate as a reward) to my adult reading is not feasible because I have things like a job and responsibilities and a crippling social media scrolling addiction to contend with (more on that last one in a moment), I think it’s high time I re-incentivize myself.

Okay, back to the crippling social media scrolling addiction.

I could go on and on about how much I love social media because it has given me some of the most amazing things I have today. If I hadn’t been in the Facebook group of my favorite writing podcast, I wouldn’t have met two of my closest friends. And if I hadn’t met one of them, I wouldn’t have my writing group that has become found family to me. And if I didn’t have that writing group, I wouldn’t have my day job. And if that day job hadn’t given me the freedom to travel I wouldn’t have met my fiancée! And that’s just Facebook… TikTok has taught me how to do craft and baking and gardening things I never would’ve found anywhere else. And instagram has brought me some of my favorite writing friends. There is so much good that comes from it… but there also has been a dark side (at least there has been for me).

I am a scroller.

I will start and then I find myself an hour later, eyeballs deep in videos about competitive hobby horsing. I will be reading on the couch and not even five minutes will go by before my fingers are itching to grab my phone. It really has become a problem. I am an iPad adult. Even before the TikTok ban and re-emergence of the artist formerly known as TikTok and before the openly horrifying policies of Meta (they’ve always been terrible, they’re just saying the quiet parts out loud now), I was planning to have 2025 be my year I give myself peace. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it, but I knew I needed to. I wanted to live in my real life and not just my digital life.

Then everything has happened with social media and it felt like the perfect time. I announced on IG that I was disappearing and then spent three days worrying that I was making a mistake. What if I needed to post on there for publishing reasons? What if I was going to be forgotten or forget others? In the midst of my spiral, I got this email from Susan Dennard about how happy she was after quitting social media. Talk about the perfect timing and perhaps a sign from the universe. It felt like the push I needed, so I deactivated my instagram and threads (I don’t think I’m at a point where I want to fully delete them rn because hopefully I will have book updates to share there someday).

I know that I’m going to have lots of time to fill without my apps, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to fill them. There are lots of answers to that—more time outside, walking, playing with the dogs, basking in the sun (or frolicking in the rare Georgia snow as the case is today). Playing games I love on my switch. Crafting.

But the answer I want to talk about here is: Reading and Writing.

Ever since Pitch Wars, both of these activities have felt insurmountable to me. I could only do one at a time and only in short bursts. I was so burnt out after PW that I couldn’t do the things I loved and instead filled some of that time with more social media. Writing my romantic thriller last year felt like a herculean effort and I am so proud of myself, but it felt like I had no time for any of the life things and I’m looking back to realize that it’s because instead of swapping out any of my social media time, I was swapping out my life things. No wonder I was feeling like I couldn’t have a life and a book! My hope is to change that this year and write in a more sustainable way. But reading still feels somewhat out of reach because my focus just isn’t there. I’m hoping as I get farther out from my scrolling habit, I’ll be able to build that focus back up. But in the meantime, I’m going to be bribing myself.

Truly, I’ll probably bribe myself forever because I am just a girl.

So here’s how my version of the BOOK IT! program is going to work.

For every book I read or every 1000 words I write, I get to put $1 into my little savings jar (it’s a bucket in my savings account and not an actual cash money jar). I can cash that money out every $50, but I can also choose to save it because there are things I want but don’t want to just buy willy nilly (or William Nilliam as my fiancée likes to say). Even though it’s not technically pizza… though I could buy myself $50 of pizza if I wanted to… I think that the incentivization of my goals will really be really fun and is going to help gamify my writing and reading as I build back my focus destroyed by years as an iPad kid. My goal is to make a monthly post to keep you updated on my progress, how it’s working for me, how many pizzas I buy, and if I need to make any changes as time goes on!

Wish me luck! And maybe join me in my attempt to bring back the BOOK IT! program?