Inks and Pixels

Being honest with myself, my gadgets sometimes feel like a black hole, sucking all of my energy and leaving me drained. One of the unhealthy things I can do to myself is engage with the internet too early in the morning. It soon becomes increasingly difficult to focus with the plenty of distractions at my fingertips.

I wanted to explore. I wanted to dive into the works of other people, compilations of knowledge between sheets of pulp covered with lines of ink. But it wasn't something I was used to... yet. So to build that habit, I had to make time, ever so little, and make it easy by keeping distractions minimal. Plain and simple, I'd rather wait to have whatever book I want to read in my hands than gamble with ebooks.

Fast forward to months later, I had read more than I thought I could. But I learned something. It was a whole different feeling and lifestyle with books. For one, I am far more likely to read a book I spent my lunch money on than a 2-second downloaded ebook. Then it's another means to detox, unwind, and improve my focus. Sat in a quiet corner, phone on DND and a book in hand... that's calming.

There are of course many books that I really want to read but can't find around. Some are by authors that aren't popular and some are educational. The obvious alternative is to find the ebook versions to download, but that circles back to using my devices again. That's usually not much of a problem if I tame the distractions, but there's a certain concern I have about them.

Have you noticed how we're moving into a future where you'll buy things yet own nothing? Books in particular. Many of the books we think we're buying on platforms like Amazon, we're just buying licenses to read them. If anything happens to Amazon's server or they just up and leave -- just saying - well, there go our books. You can't say the same for books that are already on shelves and in people's homes. And it's increasingly becoming a genuine concern for bookies.

But there's something about the smell of books, old or new... both different, though. The feeling of something fresh and untapped is what I get from new books, especially the ones I sought and bought myself. Passage of time, in the hands of different travelers through time. That smell of an old book. Yeah, you can't replace that.

To think that I used to be very well in the other camp back in my university days, when I made sure I had as few books as possible. And then I had a very large folder of different categories of books -- textbooks for school, of course. I don't think I actually needed 10% of them and then deleted them all at some point.

When it comes to educational content, I prefer to read the books in a library or something and otherwise fall back to ebooks when necessary. But with other kinds of books like self-help, psychology and finance, I'd rather have them in my hands and be more immersed.