The first of hopefully more to come
I don't have a specific hobby. I have never had one. When people ask me what I like to do, I mostly just tell them the most generic ones out there: traveling, watching K-dramas, listening to music, or reading. The truth is, none of them is true.
I enjoy those things, but I'm never that invested in them. Traveling, for instance, is too unaffordable for me that I do it only once every few years, and airports make me anxious. Watching K-dramas is also just a distraction -- from my boring life, my family, my self-loathing, and my spiraling mind. I don't even listen to songs unless I'm in the car, or somehow my favorite artists have new releases that 'oblige' me to do so; heck I can go months not listening to any music at all. Reading, then, is a just a pretense I made up years ago in an attempt to look and feel intelligent. It was nice to hear people's compliments of how fast I could read, or how smart I was just because I liked spending time in my campus' library (I was doing it cause it's the only place where nobody gave me a weird stare for being alone, and honestly it was nice being surrounded by shelves and books that seem to have thousand different stories, waiting to be chosen by us. Above all, I think, I like the quiet and needlessness of empty conversations).
As I grow older, the act of reading has slowly become a necessity: I teach people English, so I have to be somehow literate. But my book counts don't go high. At most I read 5 books a year, sometimes even fewer. It's not that fun anymore when an activity suddenly becomes a job. Nonetheless, reading still holds a special place to me. I still want to badly convince myself that it is a part of my identity. Who am I without books anyway? Just a mediocre human being living the most mediocre life that will crumble anytime once I lose footings, once my dog is gone, and once my parents are gone. After all, I'm living in a sand castle that will be washed away when life decides that it's time and dump everything everywhere all at once. I'm still dreadfully waiting for that moment to come, and no matter how much I prepare myself for it, I know I'll never be ready. I will be a complete useless wreck, and there's no escaping that.
Now, you might think this is so depressing. and you're not wrong. not entirely.
I want to love reading again. I want to feel that it's not a chore. to not feel guilty for picking the cheesiest, mildest young adults romance; to not pressure myself to read non-fiction that's supposed to be enlightening, life-changing, and awe-inspiring (read: Atomic Habit). I need something to spark that childish bliss of reading that I once had. So I made an impulse decision: I bought a Kindle.
Okay, now it's the less depressing part and the point of this self-deprecating post.
I had always thought that an e-reader is stupid. We have tablets, phones, computers -- all these hi-tech gadgets with much better screen and functionality. Why settle for a black and white e-ink screen that's so slow and limited in space? But I did anyway. I got myself one cause my friend told me I'd love it if I like reading, or how I'd feel fine spending hours on it cause the screen is less hurtful to the eyes. Once this kindle arrived in my doorstep, I was starting to regret my decision, thinking it would just end up as another electronic junk I didn't use enough to justify the price I paid and all the finite resources, unpaid labors, and possible exploitation that went into making it. But! But I'm glad to tell you that I was wrong.
The first day I had it in my hand, I was busy sending all kinds of e-books that had long lingered in my iPad, unread and neglected. Then without my realizing it, that night I let go of my attachment with my iPad and phone, and decided it was time to finish that one book I'd been reading for years but never quite finished: The Nightingale. Surprisingly enough, it would later take me only 3 days to finish it, and after that I picked up a second book -- A Little Life -- and then another -- How to Avoid a Climate Disaster -- then another, all in the span of weeks. When I'm writing this, the fourth week of June, I have read ten books this month only, and a total of 16 so far in 2023, which is no doubt the most I have ever done in my entire useless existence.
Does it mean reading has become a real hobby for me? Maybe yes, or maybe no. What constitutes a hobby anyway? I never quite figure that out. All I know is that I can now spend hours reading without caring about any K-dramas or shows, or my instagram, or twitter. It is better than nothing. It's better than loathing and doubting myself every night, waiting for my doomsday. It might be just a phase, and once the novelty of my Kindle wears off, I might revert back to my old habits, but for now I couldn't care less. It has now become a means of escape from the dark endless tunnel I sometimes find myself in. I'll read all the books in my kindle library before deciding whether it was a stupid purchase or a worthy one. The conviction for now seems to be the latter, though.
Well, if later someone asks me what my hobby is, maybe I'll devise a new answer: keeping myself afloat for as long as possible, by any means necessary. Does this count as a hobby?
