Reading.

Back when I was a kid, reading was a favorite pastime of mine. I spent countless hours flitting through the pages of numerous books, novels, encyclopedias - basically, anything that had words on it. And by words, I mean English words. I never did feel drawn to anything written in  my native language, for some reason.

I absolutely loved reading. While other kids were running around, watching television, playing with toys and socializing, I was immersing myself in the vast expanses of my own imagination, guided by the words of writers who lived in different countries, continents, and even time periods. It wasn't that I didn't do any of those other things typical of children my age, I just spent a much larger portion of my time surrounding myself with books. 

Books were my constant companions. I recall having sizeable stacks of them with me on my bed, so that I could read myself bedtime stories to put myself to sleep. This never worked, however - I always found myself so intrigued by the book I was reading that I would fight off my drowsiness in order to finish a particular section. 

I suppose it's unsurprising that I didn't have many friends back then. I guess I just didn't find other children to be even half as interesting as any of the characters in the stories I read, or the other marvelous things that I read about in my encyclopedias. No one at that age really cared for any of that, I suppose - at least no one I'd met, anyway. 

As the years passed, I found that I wasn't reading as much as I used to. Part of this I attribute to the fact that I'd read practically every book at home that I'd found to be appealing, and as we didn't buy a lot of new material I'd settle for re-reading the old stuff. Besides that, I had now found friends and discovered a love for football, so these things kept me occupied, away from my books. The fact that school got increasingly harder played its part in all this, too.

I still found time to do my reading, though, albeit not in the way I'd done it in the past. This, you see, was due to my discovery of the internet and the information and knowledge that came with it. I now spent my days roaming Wikipedia and football-related websites in order to fulfill my new, insatiable thirst for knowledge of all things football. As an aside, I read up on chess-related topics as well; I was part of the school team and felt the need to constantly improve myself.

In between all this internet reading, though, I still managed to find time to read in the traditional way. 

However, there came a time when my reading was brought down to an all-time low - this was last year, during my time at Nirwana. I don't recall reading much at all, as I busied myself with friends and my studies. The lack of good new material was, once again, another contributing factor.

Lately, though, I have been getting new books. Things like this are bound to happen when you get a chunk of cash (in the form of book vouchers) from the government to hit the bookstores with.

So now I have all these new books, and I still have half of my semester break left to finish them. Several years ago this wouldn't have been a problem - I completed each of the last three books in the Harry Potter series in under two days. Now, though, it's a different story. I've learned to take my time, for it is only through relaxed calmness that reading can be truly enjoyed.

They say that there's nothing like your first love, and I tend to agree. I love reading, and I don't see how anything's ever going to change that.