Books
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Books have always been an escape for me. I started reading at a very young age, and I can’t recall not having a book tucked under my arm wherever I went. It was the same in school and I’d end up spending an entire recess reading books while my friends ate. That was partly due to the fact that I didn’t have the courage to order food, but I was always satisfied to go hungry just because I had an entire world waiting for me in whatever novel I had my head buried in. When I tell you I read, I mean I read everything and anything I could get my hands on.
Sure, there were the typical fantasy novels a kid my age would get into. Harry Potter was and still is a big part of my life (I dare you to ask me any trivia question), and so were other genres. I read a lot of romance novels that taught me how I was supposedly way behind my peers when it came to that department, and even some sci-fi (which isn’t my favourite genre at all but I guess I could enjoy some of Dean Koontz’s writing).
Now that I’m much older, I don’t read as much as I wish I could. I work multiple jobs and get badly underpaid for it. I survive but that’s only because I have the luxury of living in one of the world’s most expensive cities and thus I still live with my parents. There’s no shame in it of course, but that’s a whole other discussion for another time.
I recently started a new job and the main perk of it is that it’s a 9am to 6pm job, meaning I’ve had to form some sort of routine to be able to get through my day productively. That means waking up at 7am, doing yoga on most mornings, then settling into work for 9 hours, before being able to relax. TikTok worked for awhile, and so did Netflix. But there’s no real joy, no sense of satisfaction, that could be derived from that so I decided to start reading again. Mind you, I’ve spent the last few months buying books nonstop. Like, spending close to $200 every month on new books that end up sitting pretty on my bookshelf and don’t get touched.
Now that I have the time, I’ve been slowly going through, oh I don’t know, a novel a day? I have a bad habit of binge reading when a story gets exciting and that leads to me staying up till 3am on most nights while trying eagerly to get through a story. It’s exciting and takes me to new worlds and new perspectives I never thought I’d see again. Books were there like an old found friend…
