I want to read

I want to read. And not an article or movie or TV episode review. Not a Tweet or Facebook or BBM status update, no matter how amusing. Not a blog. Not an email, or five hundred of them. And for heaven’s sake, not a report or presentation or minutes. I want to read a book. Not an e-book. Not a book to proofread. A real honest-to-god, page-turn-able, bookmark-requiring book. 

I spend about seven-eighth of my average workday reading stuff. No exaggerations at all. Not all of it is necessarily work. Sometimes I get distracted and read non-relevant articles or something that's been shared on Facebook/Twitter. And the remaining one-eighth I write. But then I have to read what I write too, more than once, so it just adds to the total time. 

And yet, it feels like I haven't read anything in really, really long.

It isn't that the stuff I read is boring. Far from it. I often come across really insightful pieces, my Twitter timeline is full of Tweets that are very witty and often crack me up, and sometimes I read something that is so well-written that it evokes envy - why couldn't I have written that?

But I am sick of reading on a screen. I've had an almost constant headache for about two years now, some days it's less, some days it's excruciating, some days it's dormant, but I don't think it's ever going to go away. 

I want to read on paper. I want to hold the book in my hands, turn the pages, spend hours without being called away, not look at my phone, not talk to anyone; just be completely immersed in the universe of the book. Be lost in the story, visualise as I read, not notice if someone tries to attract my attention. For a few hours nothing else exists but me and the book, me and the characters, me and the story. 

Or not even me; just them.

Much later, re-emerge into the real world, adjust my bearings, get used to outside. 

Repeat.

I miss the feeling terribly.