Today I realised that I have an addiction, it’s called Reading and I’m going to try to reign it down.
You might think that this Reading (with capital R), is not an addiction. That it’s a good thing to supply your mind with endless reads, but too many goods will end up bad as well. If you start your day with reading, followed by breakfast and more reading. Taking a bath and waits for the time for class by reading, and finish your day by reading yourself to sleep, well it’s bad.
I’ve timed it, and my daily readings could stretch from 8-10 hours a day. Now that I really think about it, it is bad. I realise that this love of reading I have, it is starting to become a sort of escapism from real life event. I’m starting to ignore matters at hand and lazily flick my mind on some fiction.
This revelation started when I was in a middle of reading a story by an independent online author (oh gosh, who am I kidding? It’s a fanfiction in AO3..). At some point, I found myself rather bored and felt the story overtly bland and predictable. The plot seemed recycled and the characters borderline depressing and just plain sad. But as I keep on complaining and makes small derogatory remark upon the fiction, I also keep on reading the thing until it’s finished. I ended up telling my self, “what the frak have I’ve been reading?” a bit angrily.
It felt like those romanticised Train Crash phenomenon. I cant stop from seeing this disaster until everybody is left crashing and burning from the train wreck. I know I’m supposed to just drop the story and go on with other things, like trying to find an alternative reading choice, and that’s what took me by surprise. All this readings, train wrecks and horrible fiction, when will I stop?
That question made me think about my experience as a book nerd. I love reading ever since I was a kid. And I also regard my self as a comprehensive reader. The kind of reader who look beyond the narrative and try to point out the altruism aspect of the story. I love digging into a book and found the tiny niche plot and emotion you could examine. And that is also the reason why I’m completely entranced with the fanfiction world. It really supply my mind who wants to know more and analyse more about a certain scene of a story.
Another point, lately I’ve been really into AO3 since the people/author there are really nice and communicative. There’s a certain pleasure to review a story and receive an instant reply from the author. This usually ends up with a rather intense series of chats with the author which I really love.
Does that mean I crave for communication? Mayhap that is true as well. It is hard to find somebody whom you could engage in a literary level about something you’re both passionate about. And that kind of reasoning made me want to read as much as books, stories and online fictions the Internet could provide. I started hounding links after links, recommendations after another. I could gobble a 100 pages in notch time. Reading become an important aspect I need to supply my bored as hell mind. But over the weeks and months, I started to realise that I’m tired and I want to stop reading, but how?
A quick look at Google and I found a link that held several interesting article. They claimed the existence of Reading Addiction and how to fight it. And like a lot of self-help tips in battling addiction, it started with admitting the fact that you’re addicted.
So yeah, my name is Tane and I’m addicted to reading.
aquavintage 