I recently expressed to my parents that I wanted to spend an extended amount of time in Indonesia. There are a lot of reasons for me to do so: roots, family, landscape, food, language, etc. But there's also another reason. Looking back at my career as an English student, I realized that there are a bunch of books I probably should have read but never did: Huck Finn, Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, etc. You know, shit they make you read in High School but without good enough teachers to make you realize why it's good/important. And I thought, "oh, it'd also be a rad time to read those books. I've always found I read more when I'm in Indonesia."
Essentially, I want to go halfway around the world to catch up on my reading.
I can pinpoint the exact reason why I read A LOT more when I'm in Indonesia than when I do when I'm at home: screens.
My grandma isn't the richest, and she only has one TV (ONLY ONE?!?! WHAT?!?!) and no computer. Sure, sometimes I'll sit down with my kid cousins and watch some Japanese cartoons translated into Indonesian and it'll be fun. Sometimes I'll watch some Indonesian drama with a subconscious sense of Western superiority and then I'll realize it and either think it's funny or fucking awful of me. Sometimes I'll watch the night time news with my grandma in a language I barely understand and enjoy spending some time with her.
Sometimes. Most of the other times, when I'm not doing awesome shit like eating or, y'know, actually BEING IN INDONESIA, I'm reading.
I'm a fucking English major. I shouldn't have this problem. And yet, I do.
But here's the interesting thing: most of the time when I go to Indonesia, I visit my (maternal) Grandma's place on one island. After spending some time there, and visiting whatever family is on that island, I'll hop on over to another island, a more metropolitan one, where my dad's side of the family is and stay at my uncle's place. My uncle is fucking loaded, thus, he has a computer with Internet access.
I've noticed that I have very little interest to use the Internet at this point. Sure I'll check my e-mail and say hi to a couple friends on Facebook, but that's about it. Twenty minutes tops. If even. Instead, I'll pass the time reading. I think it's because at that point, I've been going, at the least, three weeks without Internet and have realized that I like reading Steinbeck (or whatever) more.
But then I come back home and it's all down the shitter.
Unfortunately, with real life coming up, I don't think I'll be able to spend six months in Indonesia like I wanted. But I do need to catch up on my reading.
Solutions:
1) Kill my TV. Netflix Mad Men instead.
2) Don't be a fucking loser about the Internet. It really is that simple. If you are aware about the inherent ridiculousness in killing mass time on Facebook, that ought to be shameful enough to make you stop. If you aren't, then you should be ashamed of yourself.
That's not to say that the Internet is without benefits. It very much is. So much. But if you perceive all of your actions on it with a qualitative value, then you can realize how much of your time spent on it is doing absolutely nothing. Go read a book. A good one.
