I ... Can't Read

It's time for me to admit something that embarrasses me,... but first let me get this reference to a Beggin' Strips commercial from 1998 out of the way.

What's in that bag? ... I can't read!!!

Heh, classic. Okay, time for the embarrassing admission. It appears that I can't read!

Or ... sort of. Maybe? Obviously I'll need to explain this a bit better.

It's not exactly that I can't read anything. I can clearly read well enough to write this post. I can read instructions. I can read a recipe. I can read most articles on certain topics. I read twitter multiple times a day and scan the headlines on CNN, NPR and Reddit among other places with a bit of frequency. Perhaps too much frequency. In fact I probably read a lot every single day right now.

It's just that I used to be a seriously avid book reader. I used to devour books, usually in rapid succession, novel after novel after novel. And I was proud of it. I'd go through shelves of them in a whole year. If I haven't mentioned it, Stephen King is my favorite author but I've got so many other books too. Piles of Star Wars books, fantasy, sci-fi, adventure, all kinds of digital books too, Lovecraft and graphic novels and vampire romance and more. Reading has always been so much fun for me.

However, it seems that with the passing of the last year or two, I've really slowed down and have read almost NO BOOKS that I can think of. I got several books of varying size for Christmas this past December and I've been handed or recommended a few since my birthday. And they are all sitting here stacked on my bedside table almost entirely untouched. What happened?

Obviously, I could list the things that I'm busy with instead. I guess. My current job now and the jobs I've had for the past few years before that have kept me pretty busy, which is good. I don't want to get into it right now, but the politics in my country have been a horrible nightmare since at least November 2016. So that's a bit distracting. More recently there is a global pandemic to think about constantly.

But these all seem like part of the problem. I hate to admit it, but I think the real problem is that I'm buried in my phone so much. Obviously, I'm doing a lot of reading there, but I'm also doing a lot of gaming, scrolling, retweeting, reblogging, liking, tagging, upvoting and trolling. And also a lot of doomsurfing, which also isn't healthy. It feels like my reading comprehension, which I've always know was super high, is slipping into an abyss.

I have got to get back into reading and reading right now and reading heavily. It may not solve any of the other problems rolling around, but it's so strongly a part of who I am and who I want to be that I feel out of place just recognizing that this change has occurred.

Who am I? Time to open a book and find out.