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I was shocked when I actually had to read a book of fiction the other day. It was for pleasure. It was for no agenda other than to simply read it. And I could not do it. It felt like trying to walk after a really bad accident.
I have to read and write for a living. So I do a lot of it. Most days I work upwards of 10 hours. Much of that time is reading, researching, writing, and talking to people over the phone (conversations that are preceded with reading a number of emails and that are followed by sending out lots of emails as well.) So, of course, there is the matter of not having time to read for pleasure. But there was something else that I had not quite anticipated - a bleeding of joy around an activity that I had enjoyed a lot as a kid. In fact, I had enjoyed reading so much that a lot of my major life decisions - such as what to study, what job/s to take up, what to spend money on, what kind of structures to have to my days - all of them centred around the fact that I enjoyed reading.
Until one day I found that I couldn't. Not didn't love it as before. But couldn't love it as before.
After that moment, whenever I saw all those unread books around me, I felt really stifled. There were cartons and shelves with books that I had ordered, bought, sourced from quaint bookshops, serendipitously stumbled over, etc.
And now, not only did they stifle and feel suffocating, they also felt as if they just did not belong to me. (This sentence practically wrote itself. I was thinking of something else but this just wrote itself out. So I won't delete it.)
Anyway, I was really swimming in work. Then one day, at a brainstorming session for one of my projects, we were all coming up with story ideas. I came up with one that was flimsy and hollow. And it was liked. That is when I felt a weird kind of fear - one that I had felt three years ago when I started freelancing. That I could get applauded for mediocrity and that I could get used to it.
The thing is that I have read enough in my life and lived with sporadic periods of mindfulness to at least convey stuff interestingly. I am working with a particular circle of people. I could just coast along.
But since I don't want to coast any more, I decided to read. I picked up Paula Hawkin's 'The Girl in the Train'. It's a thriller and it's quite nice but I panicked at the amount of time I was taking to finish one page. But I read it through. I finished a page. Then the next one and the next one.
And then I wanted to know the whole story and I cried over Rachel's circumstance and although I had guessed the killer, I wanted to know how the story ended.
After that, I picked up 'A thousand splendid suns' by Khalid Hosseini.
Then I read Shaheen Bhatt's \I've never been (un)happier.'
I cannot explain the relief and joy I felt after discovering that I could still read for fun. Nothing in those are required for me to finish my storyboard or create a pitch deck. But I wake up in the morning and before I start my day (where I will be working in a subdued state of panic for running out of time), I read. After a tough call, I read.
The benevolence of a story is just the best form of compassion there is. I think when a writer writes a book for a reader she may never know or may never even like (if they ever met) is reason enough to believe that we are made of goodness.
Anyway, I started recording my impressions of the books that I read here. Why am I doing that? Well, for a couple of reasons. Ideally, I would like to write about this but I want those thoughts and ideas to germinate in me for a while. Since I am doing a whole lot of other things to meet deadlines, I want to be stubborn about this one luxury (of writing when I feel like) to be stubborn about.
Also, a lot of my work now does involve writing for a lot of different kind of media. So I am trying to see how does recording something for YouTube differ from actually writing something in long-form? There are the obvious differences, of course, but also I notice that I may be choosing different things to talk about for YouTube. The process is new. I will probably write more about it later.
For now, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOwAM34h0nHcrfA1kPO-XpQ?view_as=subscriber
I have to read and write for a living. So I do a lot of it. Most days I work upwards of 10 hours. Much of that time is reading, researching, writing, and talking to people over the phone (conversations that are preceded with reading a number of emails and that are followed by sending out lots of emails as well.) So, of course, there is the matter of not having time to read for pleasure. But there was something else that I had not quite anticipated - a bleeding of joy around an activity that I had enjoyed a lot as a kid. In fact, I had enjoyed reading so much that a lot of my major life decisions - such as what to study, what job/s to take up, what to spend money on, what kind of structures to have to my days - all of them centred around the fact that I enjoyed reading.
Until one day I found that I couldn't. Not didn't love it as before. But couldn't love it as before.
After that moment, whenever I saw all those unread books around me, I felt really stifled. There were cartons and shelves with books that I had ordered, bought, sourced from quaint bookshops, serendipitously stumbled over, etc.
And now, not only did they stifle and feel suffocating, they also felt as if they just did not belong to me. (This sentence practically wrote itself. I was thinking of something else but this just wrote itself out. So I won't delete it.)
Anyway, I was really swimming in work. Then one day, at a brainstorming session for one of my projects, we were all coming up with story ideas. I came up with one that was flimsy and hollow. And it was liked. That is when I felt a weird kind of fear - one that I had felt three years ago when I started freelancing. That I could get applauded for mediocrity and that I could get used to it.
The thing is that I have read enough in my life and lived with sporadic periods of mindfulness to at least convey stuff interestingly. I am working with a particular circle of people. I could just coast along.
But since I don't want to coast any more, I decided to read. I picked up Paula Hawkin's 'The Girl in the Train'. It's a thriller and it's quite nice but I panicked at the amount of time I was taking to finish one page. But I read it through. I finished a page. Then the next one and the next one.
And then I wanted to know the whole story and I cried over Rachel's circumstance and although I had guessed the killer, I wanted to know how the story ended.
After that, I picked up 'A thousand splendid suns' by Khalid Hosseini.
Then I read Shaheen Bhatt's \I've never been (un)happier.'
I cannot explain the relief and joy I felt after discovering that I could still read for fun. Nothing in those are required for me to finish my storyboard or create a pitch deck. But I wake up in the morning and before I start my day (where I will be working in a subdued state of panic for running out of time), I read. After a tough call, I read.
The benevolence of a story is just the best form of compassion there is. I think when a writer writes a book for a reader she may never know or may never even like (if they ever met) is reason enough to believe that we are made of goodness.
Anyway, I started recording my impressions of the books that I read here. Why am I doing that? Well, for a couple of reasons. Ideally, I would like to write about this but I want those thoughts and ideas to germinate in me for a while. Since I am doing a whole lot of other things to meet deadlines, I want to be stubborn about this one luxury (of writing when I feel like) to be stubborn about.
Also, a lot of my work now does involve writing for a lot of different kind of media. So I am trying to see how does recording something for YouTube differ from actually writing something in long-form? There are the obvious differences, of course, but also I notice that I may be choosing different things to talk about for YouTube. The process is new. I will probably write more about it later.
For now, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOwAM34h0nHcrfA1kPO-XpQ?view_as=subscriber
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