The onslaught of short-form media really ruined my attention span. This is what I’m always trying to improve nowadays. I’m losing the value of patience—of sitting down and immersing. I want things fast and concise. I forget how grueling long processes can be but how they pay off, and how things that take time leave a more stronger memory and impression.

Sometimes I go back to my goodreads profile and read the reviews I wrote back in my 20s. I smile at the thought of how driven and passionate I was about reading books and even reviewing them. Not that I’m blaming the anime, manga, and webtoons I’ve been devouring since I stopped reading books, but nothing has captured me the same way Twilight once did. People may throw insults at it, but that was my gateway to reading. And almost a thousand books later (sans the graphic novels), I’m still forever grateful that one night I opened this book my sisters absolutely loved and ended up falling in love with reading myself.

So far I’ve finished one book this year: George Orwell’s Animal Farm. It was a quick read. I thought, since I love watching social commentaries and documentaries, this could be a good start. It was, but it also made me even angrier about what’s happening around me. Not gonna lie, my opinion sometimes is politically charged. I remember during my uni days and saw these passionate young activists in campus, and while I admired their desires for change, it never really lingered in my mind. I was ignorant of politics as long as life was treating me just fine. But when you become an adult, you realized how easily your life can be jeopardized by the very society you trust, so I thought social commentary books would become my go-to. But nope, they weren’t, because my real drive to read is to escape.

Escapism isn’t bad reason per se, especially when I read articles about the decline of reading, any reason is a good reason to read. So many people don’t do any kind of reading anymore and I don’t want to be part of that statistics. So I completely understand, support even, the encouragement to read anything. As in anything! I remember a librarian saying that reading fanfic is perfectly ok and I agree. Sure, more challenging literature may offer better benefits but I firmly believe that every kind of reading counts; be it a graphic novel, fanfiction, web novel, and anything else that pulls you away from this brainless short-form content and let you just…immersed. And think. Yes, think, as these days, our attention is constantly being pulled in every direction, in every second, not giving us a moment to mull over. So if these kind of reading materials are what keep someone reading, then that’s a great place to start.

I also think the best way to become a reader is to honestly enjoy reading. Once you find stories you love, you’ll naturally read more and soon enough you’ll begin to branch out and explore outside your comfort zone. So yeah, it has to start somewhere. That’s why I never discourage or judge people based on what they read. The important thing (for now) is that they read—truly read.

Yeah, like actually reading—every word, every description—everything. I was genuinely shocked when I found out there are people who only read the dialogues. Then I even heard of people complaining about “big words” and even accuse authors of being ableist for using them. But the worst thing I came across was fake reading! Apparently, there are now services that make your books look “well-read.” The fuck does that even mean? People actually pay to have their books annotated, sticky tabs on pages, even fake coffee stains. It’s honestly depressing. We’ve reached a point where everything has to be a performance instead of just being something you actually enjoy without an audience in mind.

Maybe that’s why I stick to my comfort reads and my comfort medium. People might look down on me for reading graphic novels all the time, but honestly, why should I care? I read because I enjoy it, and that’s enough for me. Sure, the expanded vocabulary and all the other benefits are great, but they’re not the reason I love reading. I read because I just simply love it. I love stories! I love characters! I love romance! I love fantasy. I love all things fiction! I love them all! It’s something I do every day, and every night I look forward to settling down and read.

Yes, I read every single day. You cannot catch me going to bed without reading something every night. That’s still my ultimate pastime. Since a lot of webtoons are adaptations of web novels, when my patience runs thin, I read the novel counterparts too. So yeah, my willingness to read full-on text isn’t gone. It is just, I guess, I haven’t found the right story for it. And that’s what I’ve been searching for all these years.

Reading itself has never really been the issue, but right now I just want to broaden my horizons again through reading a novel. Yes, a novel. A book. I want to read books again. And I’ve been trying—scouring goodreads for interesting summaries, looking at what people are reading, and just stacking up books I think I’ll love. As of writing this, I’m 60% through this book, and I’m really enjoying it. I’m optimistic that this will be the lucky start—that light at the end of this very long tunnel I’ve been trekking through for so many years now. I want my reading choices to be as diverse as possible!