Dear reader,
Before we begin, I recently published one of the best videos I’ve made on YouTube. I would love your feedback on it. Here’s the link: How I started journaling (it changed my life). Thank you in advance!
Now, back to this week’s issue:
I have disliked reading for most of my life. So much so that I purchased a subscription to Speechify at $140 a year to read things to me. When I was preparing for the SAT exam, I was struggling with the English portion because there was a lot of reading involved.
The reasons:
- Reading requires a lot of focus and concentration.
- I am a slow reader.
- I don’t have a strong vocabulary, so I don’t understand a lot of words.
I think the strongest reason why I disliked reading was because I found it really challenging. I wasn’t good at it, so I was like, I just won’t do it.
And it worked for a long time: I either didn’t have to read, or I could just use Speechify. For context, I listened to 10 books in 2023 and have already listened to about 13 audiobooks in 2024.
But then came university, and along with university came my English professor, who loves assigning readings in class (no laptop or phone usage allowed), which we have to read and discuss the same day.
That made me face my poor reading skills—I hated it. I didn’t hate the professor for assigning those readings, but myself for being so poor at something as crucial as reading and for running away from it for so long.
I then decided that I would work on my reading. It has been two weeks since I started reading text and books instead. As of now, I can only read slowly, and I often have to re-read paragraphs to understand anything at all.
But the good thing is that I have been making some progress. Last week, I added a few e-books to my phone’s Books app. I read on my phone when I’m in the subway or waiting for something. I still listen to audiobooks when I’m walking or when there are a lot of people on the subway, and reading on my phone is not viable.
So, the lesson I’ve learned:
I won’t run away from things I find difficult. Regardless of how much I run from something, it will catch up sooner or later. So, I’ll face the things I find difficult in the present. It’s when I find something difficult and still attempt to do it that I know I’m growing.
I hope this lesson (that I learned the hard way) will be useful for you, and perhaps this will encourage you to face your own “I don’t want to do this” skills.
I’ll see you next week, take care!
Warmly,
Suraj
