like most people I know, I was a voracious reader in my youth, usually clocking in at 100+ books/year, and today I am unable to read books, except in audiobook format.

I still don't fully understand the causes of this social phenomenon, which has been the subject of many a youtube essay etc. but much to my delighted surprise, I found I could get into books just as easily as in the old days—during my camping trip. sadly some other issues got in the way of really catching up, but it wasn't due to difficulty concentrating or a supposedly "eroded attention span". In a space of four days I finished Killjoy's "We Will Be Gone Tomorrow" (was already half-done), then I read the entirety of Caplan's "Rhyme's Challenge: Hip Hop, Poetry, And Contemporary Rhyming Culture" ( @Lunatic you might enjoy this one), then I got well into adrienne's "We Will Not Cancel Us" which was in my list forever.

I tried to understand how come I recovered my long-lost ability, and I think it boils down to two things:

- no Internet ("no cellphones" isn't good enough, has to be "no Internet")
- no backlog of responsibilities.

the second point merits description. usually I go through my days in a state of permanent worry: there's so much cruft piled up in the apartment, and what about everyone's next meal, and this and that plant needs repotting, and I gotta fold my clothes; and I have to keep up the pressure on the visa office, plus do that arbeitsamt registration, and the kids' health insurance is not transfereed yet, and did I pay that one bill? and I should find a lawyer, and what about my genital surgery, and there's that redesign at work, and my home NAS is broken….... etc. etc. etc., there's stuff everywhere nagging at my attention, demanding care, there's too many fires burning that only I can put out and if I don't lots of bad things will happen not just to me but lots of people.

so when I sit to read, I start thinking of all the stuff I should be doing instead, and I can't turn it off. obviously I know that I can't be doing things 24/7 and there's no difference between books and, say, social media, or playing games, or any other of the things I do when I'm not being productive. but somehow books seems especially sensitive to this, they make me reflective in a way that I reflect about all my shortcomings.

in the camping trip I had no *means* to order my apartment, or fill forms, or find a lawyer, so I also had no guilt or worry for not being doing these this. that plus the absence of the temptations of the Internet resulted in going through books like a hot knife through margerine.

my conclusion is that there's nothing wrong with my attention span; rather the way society works changed the environment around me, in a way that doesn't work well for my mind. adulting is a fuck and computers were a mistake.