Anyone else putting an active effort into rekindling their…
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Anyone else putting an active effort into rekindling their love for reading, but facing challenges?
No pun intended with the title.
Older Gen Z here (2001) looking to see if anyone else used to be an avid reader, but fell out of love with it and is now trying to get back into it? I used to love reading books, especially back in middle school; I always tried to sneak a few pages in of a book between classes and whatnot. However, when high school came along, I quickly got burnt out of reading a whole bunch of books that I didn't find interesting for honors and AP classes. It was by the middle of my junior year where I just completely lost interest in reading both for school and as a hobby (I think A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man finally did me in, apologies to my teacher and James Joyce lol). I tried to pick it back up during college, but then COVID hit my second semester, and I just completely stopped reading for fun a few months into the pandemic. I would only read as much as I needed to out of my textbooks to pass classes, and that was it. Straight survival mode reading, with the negative feedback loop that entails.
Now, I'm three years out of undergrad, and in grad school, and working a full time job. I want to get back into reading, but I'm honestly a little embarrassed to say that it's been a struggle for me to do so. Firstly, outside of historical nonfiction, I don't really know what I want to read, especially when it comes to fictional works, and I struggle to find good books that would pique my interest.
It's also a struggle for me go both get in the mood to read and to keep a reading session going. I'm working through Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union right now. It's a great book, but it just feels like I'm forcing myself to go through the motions of reading it. I can almost only read it in the dull hours of a business trip: waiting at the airport, on the plane, in the hotel room. Sometimes, I would just go to a waffle house by myself at night and sit at the counter reading while I wait for my coffee and scrambled eggs (such a vibe, I 100% recommend). I travel decently often for work, on average three days at a time, once per month. But even then, it's taken me a little over a year to get through three-quarters of this book, and I cannot get in the mood to read when I'm at home. I even tried purchasing a bedside lamp, so I can just turn it on and off without having to get out of my bed. But even with the convenience that this thing affords me, I still can't be bothered to read more than a couple pages at night before I just want to fall asleep.
I feel like the pandemic, combined with the rise of short form media just completely nuked my attention span and I almost gotta put in an active effort to retrain that. Especially at home where I've got a load of distractions. Has anyone else tried to square up with the modern social media algos that are honestly kinda poisoning our minds? Anyone else used to love reading, but stopped in the wake of tiktok and IG reels? Any other fellow zoomers out there managed to get back into reading?
#entertainment
source
No pun intended with the title.
Older Gen Z here (2001) looking to see if anyone else used to be an avid reader, but fell out of love with it and is now trying to get back into it? I used to love reading books, especially back in middle school; I always tried to sneak a few pages in of a book between classes and whatnot. However, when high school came along, I quickly got burnt out of reading a whole bunch of books that I didn't find interesting for honors and AP classes. It was by the middle of my junior year where I just completely lost interest in reading both for school and as a hobby (I think A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man finally did me in, apologies to my teacher and James Joyce lol). I tried to pick it back up during college, but then COVID hit my second semester, and I just completely stopped reading for fun a few months into the pandemic. I would only read as much as I needed to out of my textbooks to pass classes, and that was it. Straight survival mode reading, with the negative feedback loop that entails.
Now, I'm three years out of undergrad, and in grad school, and working a full time job. I want to get back into reading, but I'm honestly a little embarrassed to say that it's been a struggle for me to do so. Firstly, outside of historical nonfiction, I don't really know what I want to read, especially when it comes to fictional works, and I struggle to find good books that would pique my interest.
It's also a struggle for me go both get in the mood to read and to keep a reading session going. I'm working through Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union right now. It's a great book, but it just feels like I'm forcing myself to go through the motions of reading it. I can almost only read it in the dull hours of a business trip: waiting at the airport, on the plane, in the hotel room. Sometimes, I would just go to a waffle house by myself at night and sit at the counter reading while I wait for my coffee and scrambled eggs (such a vibe, I 100% recommend). I travel decently often for work, on average three days at a time, once per month. But even then, it's taken me a little over a year to get through three-quarters of this book, and I cannot get in the mood to read when I'm at home. I even tried purchasing a bedside lamp, so I can just turn it on and off without having to get out of my bed. But even with the convenience that this thing affords me, I still can't be bothered to read more than a couple pages at night before I just want to fall asleep.
I feel like the pandemic, combined with the rise of short form media just completely nuked my attention span and I almost gotta put in an active effort to retrain that. Especially at home where I've got a load of distractions. Has anyone else tried to square up with the modern social media algos that are honestly kinda poisoning our minds? Anyone else used to love reading, but stopped in the wake of tiktok and IG reels? Any other fellow zoomers out there managed to get back into reading?
#entertainment
source
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