Sand/Sieve

I used to read a lot. No, I mean like all the time. I was known for it. Voracious is the most accurate word to describe my relationship to reading in my youth. I carried a book with me at all times and would pop it out during car rides to and from school, outside the class room door while I waited for the teacher to arrive. There were times when I got in trouble during class for reading my book from home instead of whatever it was the teacher wanted us to focus on.

I collected books. Stacks of them would sprout up from the ground in my room; beat up paperbacks with yellowed pages and wonderful mustiness about them, handsome leatherbound hardcovers from the library or sent to me by the science fiction book club on a monthly basis. I did favor works that featured wizards or spaceships, but I also read other forms of fiction. Detective novels. Crime novels. Classics and fresh-off-the-presses pulp.

I loved books and consumed them at an unlikely pace.

But that was back in the foggy mists of pre-history, before we all plugged into The System. I am old enough to have grown up without constant ready access to basically the entire catalogue of mass media, Over time, my access to a celestial jukebox that enabled me to seek out and enjoy vast clouds of pure, premium, grade-A Entertainment™ at any time in unlimited quantities.

Now, I tend to play video games or passively watch streaming shows. Or, more often, I just scroll mindlessly through feed after feed. Reddit. Facebook. Twitter. RSS. These are what I read now instead of the novels of my youth.

That's not entirely true. I still read books, though I usually consume them in digital form taking space on a hard drive instead of a leaning stack of dead trees. I do read some books on paper, though. It takes more effort than it used to. My brain has been warped and shallowed by the dopamine dispensers listed above. It doesn't take to extended narrative the way it used to. I want to read more, but it takes concerted effort. I don't get lost in the flow state where I force myself to keep reading after my eyes begin to droop before bed. There are no more ill-advised, flashlight powered all nighters where I went through an entire novel in the hours I should have been sleeping. Now: I prefer the sleep.

I think the younger me would be a little saddened by that loss were he to somehow learn of my current state. I tend to agree.