Hot Girl Scribe

After I graduated college, I was sufficiently burned out on reading. While I tried multiple times to pick up a book, I could never get back into it. I’d spent so much time during school reading under high-pressure circumstances trying to absorb as much information as possible I’d forgotten how to read for pleasure

One day after mindlessly scrolling on Tik Tok for god knows how long, I decided I needed a change. I was addicted to staring at my phone, that was for sure, but the way I felt after mindlessly scrolling through the app finally convinced me to do something about it. I knew I needed to replace the doom scrolling with a better option, so I downloaded Kindle Unlimited. I removed Tik Tok from my home screen and moved the reading app into its place. What had become an automated action of clicking on Tik Tok could be replaced by opening Kindle and reading. I then browsed the app to see what was offered for free that I could read.

A short story by Margaret Atwood titled My Evil Mother was available for free. A meager 32 pages felt doable, so I committed to reading it. The story was great. I finished it in one sitting, which looking back, doesn’t seem like much, but for someone who had not been able to get through a story in years, it felt like an accomplishment.

That was the turning point. I felt satisfied, and my brain felt satiated, a side effect from reading I had forgotten about. I remembered what it felt like to have a whole world built from pages as your imagination interacted with the author’s words. I forgot the true sense of escape I used to feel as a young adult, fully submerging my brain into a different world, leaving my current one behind. From then on, I was hooked.

Here’s what, in my opinion, made it possible for me to become a reader again:

1. I acknowledged that I did not want to spend too much time on social media and wanted a more “wholesome” hobby.
2. I made it easy to automatically make the right decision by simply replacing the app on my phone with a reading app. This way, when I mindlessly reached for my phone to go to Tik Tok, my muscle memory would send me to Kindle instead.
3. I started small. I didn’t try to hit the ground running with a massive Dostoyevsky novel or a super informative nonfiction book. I chose to start small with a story that I found interesting by an author I had enjoyed in the past.
4. I noticed the difference in how I felt after reading versus scrolling on social media. I allowed that to reinforce my reading habit further.

If you’re looking for your sign to start reading again, this is it. I thought I would never escape my doom-scrolling ways, but I was able to pull a 180 and reclaim my free time.

Let me know in the comments if you have had a similar experience, and share what you’re currently reading.