A year of reading

My love for reading started just about a year ago. I’d never been much of a reader, but after getting COVID last year and being bedridden for a solid week, I decided rather than scrolling on my phone all day, I’d pick up a book and start reading instead. Less than a week later, I finished that book. I’d never read a whole book in less than a week before, and it felt good. After finishing, I wanted to keep reading, so I picked up another book immediately. I’ve been hooked ever since.

It’s hard for me to quantify how reading has improved my life, but it’s easy to see how it has improved my conversations with my family and friends. The concepts and ideas I come across from fiction and non-fiction books tend to make their way into my daily conversations. These conversations are rich and help me to understand the world just a little bit more.

Having a daily reading habit has awoken me to the sheer amount of derivative content found on the internet. While many people are producing great stuff online, there is an insane amount of repetition going on, too. Reading pulls me away from the monotony and gives my brain something more novel to process.

Reading a book feels better than spending hours upon hours scrolling on my phone. There’s probably a good book that can illuminate why that is, but suffice it to say that my brain is thankful to have something more substantial to digest than the never-ending stream of consciousness that is the internet.

Reading books during the internet age has a certain novelty to it. This novelty has instilled in me a desire to consume higher-quality content. But that’s not all. I’m starting to crave a higher standard from the work that I produce as well.
Reading makes me want to write because it illustrates how powerful the written word can be. That’s what this site is all about. I don’t know if I’ll ever reach the quality I’m aspiring towards, but I need to try.