Hello! I hope you’re doing well, dear reader. It’s been a while since I last wrote here; I’ve been terribly busy with school, books, and other stuff, and I expect I shall be for a long time. But this website is a long-term project which I shall never abandon.
I never managed my aforementioned summer plan, but what I did learn over the summer is the habit of reading like there’s no tomorrow. Now I read on the bus, while walking, between classes, during lunch, before bed. Right now I’m working on Infinite Jest — which was not part of my plan, but whatever, it was cheap on eBay. Honestly, I’m surprised by how interesting the book is — some people act like reading it is the ninth circle of literary Hell, but it’s actually more funny and witty than I expected, but also depressing, with interesting insights into modern American society and how hedonistic and addicted we’ve become. True, it can be crazy at times — for example, there’s a three-page footnote talking about a dead fictional man’s filmography in extreme detail. But being crazy, overwhelming, and whimsical isn’t bad. Though it’s possible my sense of “fun” has been permanently fractured by Moby-Dick’s long whaling chapters, or perhaps I just haven’t reached the really hard parts yet…
To be honest, I’ve given up on trying to completely eliminate social media from my life. Before, I used to act like it was some deadly evil, but I realized that demonizing it so intensely wouldn’t let me forget about it and move on. “The forbidden fruit is the sweetest”, as they say; whenever I was hopeless or stressed out, I found myself logging back onto Reddit. Now, I have an account again, and have accepted that, because I live in the twenty-first century, I was taught at a young age to communicate with and seek help from the world online, and it has become a nearly irreversible part of who I am. But now that I’ve returned, I actually haven’t been using it much — not because I’m making extreme efforts not to, but because I’ve developed the routine of packing my days with so much work that I don’t have time to lie around on my bed and scroll anymore. Besides, now that I have an account, I’ve joined subreddits with stuff much less eye-catching and sensationalistic than the memes and politics on the main page.
Anyway, thank you for your interest; if you’d like, have a Rachmaninoff prelude. It is my friend’s favorite, and I am currently learning it. Have a great day ^^