Wow. Here it is. Look at me go. Writing and starting a blog during a pandemic.
This picture was taken a couple weeks ago and it still feels so surreal to me, seeing myself like that, hair blowing, holding a fancy cocktail in beautiful scenery, with a genuine smile on my face.
I feel like just with many others during this calamitous time that the girl in this photograph is not what I look like most days. Every day there it feels like a new challenge and not the good kind.
You are probably wondering why this woman talking about herself when it's just a blog about books and reading.
I believe in transparency: you should know a bit about the author as well as their content.
I've struggled with depression and bouts of anxiety for most of my teenage to adult life, with major increase after my college graduation in 2016 and the quarantine notice for COVID-19. I asked myself time again, why did it get worse during these two periods? Why couldn't I just "move past it" and get happy?
Over time I realized these large jumps of negative feelings were due to lack of community, lack of sociabilities with fellow classmates/loving friends, and more "free time" which to me meant boredom. In 2016, I didn't know what to do to satiate it. I was making rash decisions, creating bad habits, anything I could do to release the knotted feeling in my gut. But soon I realized that when things slow down dramatically, you start to settle back into your roots.
And one of those roots for me, was being a reader.
I've always been a person obsessed with story-telling. I was the girl in class that aced her English classes, who read the assigned books, and who ended up studying filmmaking in college. Even as a child, my favorite activities were playing pretend games with my childhood best friend, playing video games and reading countless books and manga checked out from the neighborhood library.
I noticed, however, the more and more "busy" I became: investing my time in clubs, work and moving on to college, reading became less and less of a priority for me. I was creating my own story, so why was there need to ingest one?
Soon after college ended, there was an extreme increase of free time. And in that increase, I found myself getting lost. No more assignments due, no papers to write, no more seeing my classmates 2-4 times a week.
Of course I was sunken in a full time job and my friendships were still alive and well, but something was lacking. I began to get bored. And in that boredom, lied the depression jump. I started thinking of how much of my previous self I admired: childhood memories of the girl who was writing all the time and reading everything off the shelf. I missed that girl, the girl obsessed with story.
A year after graduating, I started reading a bit more here and there, slowly building the roots to what soon would become the tree of an every day habit. Now if I go more than a day without reading, the anxiety starts creeping in. Like there's something eating away at me until I open up the pages. I made it a part of my identity. I identify myself as a reader.
Over time I noticed that it helped with my depression. Sinking myself into a story and feeling the emotions of others, helping me learn to process and deal with my own. I began to feel like myself again.
It only took opening a page for me to feel rooted.
Rushing ahead to today, during this pandemic, the itch came back. Not to delve into my roots but to grow them, to share what I know and like and to provide grounding for other readers and wannabe ones.
That's what's brought me here. An avid reader itching to share her reading obsession with the world.
I will just be sharing me though the language of books. Books I like, ones that were lackluster, poetry, discussions.. anything and everything readers will love. I'm so excited to share this journey with you.
Welcome to It Only Takes a Page.
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