Back to Books

July 10, 2024

I have become increasing suicidal watching the world regress into global fascism with its whole chest on Mastodon, and every other social site on earth. I have deleted all my Instagram accounts except one, my Twitter accounts I never use, my Facebook account I created as a brand and never use, kept LinkedIn and Lemmy instances and I’m only logged into a few Mastodon instances. I have to use LinkedIn as I look for work and network on the site, despite me hating that kind of interaction. LinkedIn is a capitalist hellscape and I hate it.

The Great Reset

I hate Discord. I hate Slack. I don’t do well with those kinds of online social interactions. Watching YouTube garbage is rotting my brain^[1].

I decided that I need to go back to my roots: BBForums and reading books.

I’ve been reading books since I was 3 years old; my mom, though she couldn’t read really at all herself, read to me every night. Children’s books are easy enough, so she would read me something nightly because I enjoyed it. So one day, I remember picking up the Golden spine childrens book The Little Red Hen and sounding out the words myself (I didn’t know how to sound out lettuce until maybe 2nd grade), and I ran downstairs and said, “mommy! mommy! Look!” and proceeded to read the book followed by multiple calls to family members to show them my parlor trick.

I would read voraciously from that day until around the age of 16 when the psychosis and despair were fucking with my brain real heavy. I couldn’t concentrate for shit as my brain was filled with outside voices that would say shit to me on repeat.

I wouldn’t be able to pick books back up again until much later, around the age of 27 when I got on my current meds which are starting to fail me. I picked up a Jonathan Kellerman book and off to the races I went.

Eventually I found the Mobileread website and forums. It was there I found the ebook management software Calibre. A friend of mine taught me how to 🏴‍☠️ books on Demonoid and I must have downloaded 4000 books, most of which I tossed because I am no longer interested in them. Once I was employed I bought books, lots of them and in order to actually read them on whatever I fucking want I used DeDRM tools in Calibre to make that happen.

Goodreads

I used Goodreads a lot around 2009-2016. I was trying to do that MFA thing before I realized I was dirt poor and that shit is for trust fund babies and even if I were to get a full ride to do it, I’d still be dirt poor. I decided to do what I’ve always wanted to do and work in tech. The pay was great but I actually enjoy tech. It didn’t matter if it was $50-60Kor if I was making or $120K, I wanted to work in tech.

So I did. I started to read more non-fiction and noped out of Goodreads. It had been hard to find the time to read when I was on social media and consuming other things. I’ve always been a completionist for everything I read or games I play and it’s taken me quite a while to realize that time is finite and I am running out of it so if I don’t jive with a book or game, just put it down. So I do that now.

Fiction

I was listening to a lot of true crime books as, funny enough, there are a couple narrators I fall asleep to and books that aren’t too gory for me to sleep with while listening. However I began to notice it taking a toll on me mentally. Sometimes I’d dream about the book I was listening to while I was sleeping and I already have night terrors practically nightly for which I take medication. I began to feel darker than usual.

I missed actually reading things that made me feel good. I missed using my eInk ereader. And I missed good fiction. So I picked up a childhood favorite, It’s Like This, Cat a 1963 Newberry Award winner I begged my mom to get me from the Scholastic Book fair.

I am enjoying the hell out of that on my Kindle Paperwhite; they had it as a freebie on Amazon years ago and as someone who has always loved cats (I mean if you ain’t know that by now, idk what to tell you) I decided to revist the book which is more adult than I remember it being.

I also reread, for maybe the 20th time, Amy Hempel’s short story In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried. I read it for creative writing class a long time ago. It was written in 1983 for a university fiction journal and I remember it breaking me every time I read it. If you’re a woman or woman presenting person with a best friend you love more than anything this story will hurt you in all the best and worst ways. You can find it as a PDF on Fictionaut. Hit me up if you want it and I’ll email it to you.

Back to bed

I’ve been sick a lot while living here and last night was the first night in about two months I actually had any energy so I cleaned the floor and tried to upgrade this site to v3 which broke pretty much everything. I reverted back and now I need to sleep; it is almost 6:30 AM.

---

1. I have Yatee to keep that shit at a minimum but I log into the web interface anyway and I really wish there was a way to completely block that site forever… I actually can. I will do that today. ↩︎