A New Chapter

I had been at that phase in life lately where reading feels like a chore.

Reading used to be something I enjoy and while I still love it, I just can’t make myself touch a book. But yesterday, after many months and weeks, I picked up a book.

For the first time it felt refreshing and enjoyable to read again. The book was not a sophisticated one, it was The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli. It was just laying on the floor and I forgot to put it where it belongs after deep cleaning the room. While reading, I was listening to Jazz music and then getting lost in the content of the book.

I miss those moments where time passes by whenever I read. I loved getting lost in books and getting lost in stories. Sometimes, I even feel inspired after reading.

I don’t really know why I felt like I had reading burnout but I can pin point to some problems such as prolonged forced reading during my uni days or even after that, when I read one book/day just because I had nothing else to do. For me, there was this deep dissatisfaction when I choose "reading" as part of what I studied. I didn't know that something that I used to love since I was a kid could be something I hated and even despised.

A few months back, I collected some pdfs of random books in an attempt to fix my reading burnout. As you can guess, some of them are still left unread and untouched. I have a few that I read like books from Japanese authors such as Days at Morisaki Bookshop, it was a fantastic read that got me started exploring Japanese modern literature. But that stopped especially with so many uneventful situations in my life that hindered me from having a quiet peace of time to read. In fact, I opt for more easy entertainment such as watching endless series & movies.

Usually, if I skip a book altogether, I feel like I am at a loss of words. Like suddenly my vocabulary is decreasing and I don’t feel like arguing more or even choosing simpler and shorter words than if I were reading books and exposing myself to it. Lately, even writing feels like a chore where normally I can churn out countless words but because I don’t read that much anymore, even 500 words feels like I have to move a mountain.

Reading has so many benefits and personally for me, reading was life changing. But I find it so particularly odd that something which brought me joy became something that brought me unhappiness too. Maybe that’s what life is all about and well, I have tried fixing my relationship with book and I came to this point in life where now, I’d be okay if I am missing out on some nobel worthy prize literature or if it is taking me a few months before I can read in between the lines of some novels. It took me a while to disassociate myself with the idea that everything has to be analyzed, just like what I was taught at my trade. From the hive book community, I learned that some people read to enjoy, to be entertained, and a means of escape, not always something to analyze and something that has to be tied to some psychology or sociology theory.

Maybe this space is more like that, to actually review something without a deep analysation. Perhaps, people just like to read if the book is worth reading, not some babbling on how the novel can be classified into marxist literature or such. Perhaps, I’ll have a reading burnout moment one day in the future, but as of now, I am back, I am back being literate again.