Saved by Hot Trolls

I read an article several years ago that I think about often, even though I can’t remember its author or even the magazine. I am sure it was somewhere like Real Simple or Women’s Health, because I read those often, and this was one of those “how to life your life more fully!!” stories they love feature: basically, a woman admitted that her love for romance novels was her coping mechanism for her busy, stressful life. She was working full time, getting her MBA, the mother of two small children, and a wife – and through it all, she continued to devour trashy Harlequins when she probably should have been doing a million other things.

My life isn’t quite as demanding as that woman’s; though I work full time and go to school full time, I have few other obligations, and am lucky to have so much luxurious free time my life. That said, being in a doctoral program is still a constant albatross – there is always something I should be doing. This semester, particularly, wasn’t so fun as I struggled my way through a level of statistics that no human should ever have to understand.

As stats hung over my head the last few months, I thought about that woman, and next thing I knew, I was hitting “Add to Cart” for another teen vampire novel. When I should have been mastering multiple regression, I was becoming an expert on interpersonal relationships between humans and the supernatural. I started going crazy with procrastination, making plans for a concordance or some sort of online inter-novel reference book. My stats assignments piled up.

Finally, the last weekend of the semester rolled around, and I had no choice but to finish my portfolio. I wanted to poke my eyeballs out. But instead, I downloaded all three of Amanda Hocking’s Trylle series, practically salivating with excitement – yes, vampires are awesome, but it’s been a long time since anyone’s done trolls. And not just trolls, but HOT trolls. Changelings! How could I be despondent about stats when I had HOT TROLLS on the horizon?

So I made myself a deal. I would work in a cycle: two hours on my stats, then an hour on the trolls. Over and over. And so I did. For 48 hours, I was lost to everything but ridiculously complex math and a ridiculous story about changeling trolls.

Yes, I probably would have finished my classwork anyway. But a lot of people don’t, and I am already watching my classmates drop like flies. I am sure that many of them withhold books like this from themselves because the need to finish their schoolwork first or because of everything else they should be doing, and that means they could potentially go years without using their imaginations or getting lost in an indulgent story. I know better. Trylle saved me that weekend, and I can see that trashy teen supernatural romances will be my carrot on a stick.