No More Reading

Consumed by high school–social media, social life, and of course, homework–I must not be alone when I say that I no longer have time to read. At all.

I used to be the biggest book junkie that ever walked the earth (or at least, that walked the halls of my elementary school). I had an impatient ability to find a good-looking novel that seemed fit to my standards, and end up devouring the entire thing in a matter of hours. My devotion to a constant consuming of words also fed my hunger for my own knowledge. Within the pages, my curious young self would come across a new word–suddenly I was obsessed with the simplest of vocabulary. I loved, and appreciated, every bit of it. That was a considerable part of becoming the person that I am today: a Journalism student, an Honors English student, and a student who would put reading over many, probably more important, things. I was free to soak in any story that I chose to. There were no barriers.

The tables have turned, to say the absolute least. I find myself trapped within a constant cycle of Instagram (and other mindless networking apps), texting my friends on the most pointless subjects you can think of, and spending the late hours cramming in assignments, projects, and studies until my brain is on the brink of combusting with seemingly useless information. I completely understand the reason for homework, but this tedious task enables me from continuing my ritual of reading–I have no time to savour a good book anymore.

I know my problem with waiting until the last minute to complete something might be a factor of not having time to do anything I would personally like to do, but then again, growing up I have always been guilty of procrastination–I’d like to blame that it is in my DNA.

Slowly but surely, barriers are being added–these barriers come along with the overwhelming expectations of high school excellence. Required books for class reading are being thrown at me with the assumption to thoroughly ingest them, or else you can expect nothing  better than failure. Don’t get me wrong, some of these mandatory books can be interesting, but I can’t be the only one that struggled their way through The Odyssey. A five-hundred-and-something page story of strange adventure until the very last chapter where basically everyone dies–thank you, Homer, for that “heroic”  journey.

The shelves on my wall, with the purpose to support the variety of books–whether they have already been read, or need to be–are becoming heavier. Over the years, novels are stacking up on my shelves faster than they can be read. In my defense, you don’t want the the risk of falling shelves–the outcome could be fatal, right?

For those of you that cannot accept any lack of success, like me, you must understand the feeling of reading on your own time eventually being added to the endangered species list, and reaching a certain point of no return–high school and the extinction of free-range reading. Its like an inevitable two-for-the-price-of-one deal: high school plus everything else that comes with it equals no more reading. At all.