This was a few weeks ago but I am still surprised I did it.
I mean who reads after high school?
That was a rather naive thought to have when I graduated high school. I thought it was just a given. I was sick of always being told of what to read.
I mean, I was a reader, I was a book worm. I enjoyed reading a lot until it became too difficult for me to do so.
I was in a car accident in my senior year of high school that had me finish up home-bound.
I used to read all the books, particularly Harry Potter, particularly the Order of Phoenix and the Half Blood Prince.
But, not long after the accident, I tried reading one of those books and I couldn’t do it. I was in the first chapter of one of them, and I remember reading a paragraph that was probably 5 or less sentences long. But at the end of the paragraph I forgot what happened.
So I reread it. Nothing.
I reread it again. Still nothing.
This happened over and over until I gave up. A comfort book of mine was now unreadable. I stopped reading altogether.
College
It was a weird path to college, but in my first year at a community college I actually didn’t buy any of my own books in the second semester but rather borrowed from a friend (wow, they were really nice to let me do that). I would use Wikipedia or spark notes to get the gist, skim till I found what would seem to be an important part and then just read more of that to have a precise talking point when I needed it.
And that was that.
Later on, at University, I took classes as a Media Productions major that was much more performance based. But still, when it was required, I had my work around for reading.
Generally relying on summaries online as I had before but then also striking up conversations about the books with classmates, asking questions that weren’t too vague or even expressing frustrations about not understanding something that seemed important (in the summary) to bait them into sharing their insight.
I was crafty, and I wasn’t proud of it. I just had no intention of reading.
My self-help era
I feel like many millennials go through this. It’s not even a generation specific thing, but in the growing social media landscape, my brain was very susceptible to feelings of inferiority and thus, looking for a remedy.
Enter self help books.
I actually read some self-help books and thoroughly enjoyed them because they were focusing on stuff I was passionate and interested about in my own life. They were applicable to where I was in life and they helped me out, to a degree. So I made the mistake of thinking that I only needed to read nonfiction.
But eventually, I would turn away from those books, feeling very inadequate from all of my efforts to improve myself from my weight, faith, emotions, etc.
One big question remained, the same that none of these books solved for me.
What is my career?
What did I want to be when I grew up?
“Everyone runs their own race at different paces.”
“Comparison is the thief of joy.”
“You need to settle down.”
Contrary to what we think, or at least what I thought when I was entering the real world, everyone seemed insistent that you “just need to give it time” and “you’ll find it when you least expect it.”
Now those phrases could be alluding to different aspects of the life, most notably what comes to my mind as I read my own writing, is in love and in career.
But then, at some point and seemingly without warning, the frantic feeling of an approaching deadline grows.
Social media magnifies everything: we see classmates get promotions on LinkedIn and tie the knot on Instagram. Then you start to see more posts about their babies and their milestones. Then there are posts that make you question your plans for retirement, even though you might not have even thought about it yet.
I am lucky and blessed that even after suffering my own devastating heartbreak, I found love at a young age and have happily been married now for 8 years.
On the other hand, it took me a lot longer to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. I could put a myriad of short term stints at entry level jobs on my resume as well as dime-a-dozen positions in retail and factories.
But one thing I figured I always had going for me was the willingness to find the answer where I didn’t think it would be, or even be willing to check places I’ve already looked.
One of those stops on my “choose-a-career” merry-go-round had been writing. I’ve blogged and tried writing fiction before but stopped. I even used this domain previously before starting again from scratch this year.
I stopped for many reasons, it could be summed up as a lack of confidence in myself, but the one saying that stuck with me throughout all of that was:
“Good writers read a lot.”
I wasn’t reading, so I must not be able to write well.
Well, with every revolution of that merry-go-round I made my stop at the writer category and with each go-round it looked more and more appealing.
Until just recently, when I left a longer-than-intended stint at a retail store, did I really start to wonder if now was my time. My wife graduated and started a blossoming career, requiring me to be much more flexible in being able to take care of the kids with their commitments and appointments.
I started to write again and had so much fun, it was undeniable.
I am a writer.
Finding myself when I didn’t know I had lost myself.
I speak from the perspective of a millennial; it was romanticized to lose (or find) yourself in traveling.
While that was never my thing, I wouldn’t be opposed to traveling one day. If that doesn’t happen, pictures are good enough for me.
And boy, did I see a lot of pictures. On social media, everyone is the PR version of themselves. I saw many pictures depicting happiness, goals, and success that made me feel like an inadequate version of myself.
All of those voices from the internet got louder and louder and in turn, it got harder and harder to hear myself.
So, as I am battling my screen time in 2025 with apps and rules I set for myself, I decided to allow myself to write whatever, whenever. Most of what I write, doesn’t get published in my blog. However, it is when I am writing that I am able to hear myself again.
It is weird to hear myself again.
But I couldn’t help but think of that saying:
Good. Writers. Read. A lot.
So, I started trying to read again. I don’t know if time healed the wounds from my car accident that kept me from being able to read, but suddenly I am having fun reading again.
Still, it doesn’t happen by accident (no pun intended, I found this when I was editing), I have to schedule in the time for me to read, and man, does it feel freeing to be reading again.
If I’m not careful, I still lose much of my day to screens, even while I’m trying to type my blogs and stories on my computer!
Then I remembered libraries were a thing.
I got a library card
I used to work in the library during my study hall period in high school. I didn’t know it then but the student I worked with would one day become one of my sister-in-laws.
Libraries are a great place to unplug and read so many great stories for free.
In a world where everyone is fighting for your attention and trying to make you always need more, newer, bigger, and better, it feels like the adult thing to do is to take back control of that.
So, I have a plan in place to limit my unnecessary screen time. Time to invest in myself, time to satisfy my curiosity, to read, and to write.
The most adult thing I could do is take my time and attention back from the invasive species that is digital media. In this case, getting a library card has helped me do that.