Once an avid reader, Anna Rawhiti-Connell's attention span was shattered by increasing Twitter use, making her feel stupid, vain, and overexposed. Then she decided to read the Ockham Book Awards' long list and began her rehabilitation.
For me, it started with a tiny red Primer reader. It ended, for a few years anyway, with Twitter and the expansive and explosive world wide web. Reading books used to be my thing until my ability to focus on a single page of printed text rotted away and was replaced by the hectic and heady habits of being very online.
I used to read books like my entire personality would crumble away if I didn’t. I rocketed through the boxes of colour-coded books at primary school so quickly one year that I was sent to the library for a term to do independent study. I used this time to perfect my cartwheels, resulting in a broken toe after attempting one off a table.
This defiance was inspired by Ramona Quimby, Age 8. I had the same blunt bob cut as her and I believe, the same fears. I was too loud, too vexatious, too earnest, and too sensitive to what others thought of me.
As I threw myself across the library floor, a blur of angry hair and checked blue rompers, I escaped my exile and became Ramona.
Over the years I did what most book-loving kids do, escaping over and over again to become Laura Ingalls, Anne Shirley, Dicey Tillerman, Claudia Kishi and, beneath the covers by the light of a plastic glo-bug, hidden from my mother, the blonde twins of Sweet Valley High.
Each week, at the Hamilton Public Library, I would check out the maximum number of books you were allowed. I remember feeling so proud about graduating from the children’s book section, safely located on the ground floor, within viewing distance of accompanying adults, to the young adults room upstairs with its single bean bag and sensibly-spaced music posters.
I had wrecked my attention span and no matter how bad the craving was to rediscover the fulsome experience I’d enjoyed for most of my life as a reader of books, books had become nothing but intimidating bedside table towers that demanded too much prolonged attention.
Reading became about status and progression; the sign of burgeoning intelligence and the root cause of my right to believe I was somehow superior. It was an identity I clung to fiercely, still plagued by the fears of Anna, Age 8.
Twelve years ago I got a Twitter account and boxed my fears about being ‘too’ anything away. Too vexatious, too loud, and too earnest didn’t seem to matter on Twitter. In fact it was rewarded. Reading books seemed so passive compared to being able to write whatever you liked. So quiet and solitary, and so without an audience. So taxing on the parts of your brain that required concentration or imagination. It offered far less reward than 65 likes on a funny tweet about the dog, a display of vulnerability for attention or a serious, contemplative thought for balance. I began to think in tweets, my ego charging up as my phone charged down; another good take formed, another reason to believe I was somehow better at this than others.
Six months ago I sat in a Wellington pasta restaurant and cried to my husband about feeling trapped by "all of it". Gesturing at my phone with my fork, bucatini flying, I told him I felt stupid, vain, and overexposed. I was absorbed on a daily basis by the concerns of too many people and too many things and couldn’t hold onto a thought for any longer than it took to type it and hit send.
I certainly couldn’t read or even open a book anymore. The only narrative structures I could follow were the Pick-a-Paths laid out in threads and replies. My villains were the YouTube stars who’d done blackface eight years ago or some poor local arsehole who’d said a dumb thing. My heroes were the fly on Mike Pence’s head, the kid who wanted free nugs, and whoever it was that most devastatingly skewered the poor local arsehole who’d said the dumb thing.
The speed at which I could become tangled in niche internet drama was frightening. Even more frightening was that despite knowing how bad that made me feel, my preference was to move on and find another one, and another one. I had wrecked my attention span and no matter how bad the craving was to rediscover the fulsome experience I’d enjoyed for most of my life as a reader of books, books had become nothing but intimidating bedside table towers that demanded too much prolonged attention.
The speed at which I could become tangled in niche internet drama was frightening.
I also was jealous and angry all the time. Malevolent thoughts got triggered by a single Instagram post from a friend. All this boxing clever wasn’t vanquishing my fears about the worst parts of me, it was juicing them up. What I thought about myself, my friends, and the world at large had become completely distorted and I had a panic attack a week later.
I deleted all social media on January 1 this year. I resolved to never go back. I became a total bore explaining it to people. I attempted to become monk-like, living without ego, on a more noble quest than anyone who’d ever done this exact same thing a million times before.
I returned to Twitter in March. "Absolutely no one cares about your Twitter break" I typed, pre-empting any of my own thoughts or hurt feelings about the fact that, truly, no one did.
I returned because I know myself. I am prone to extreme action and it never sticks. In all areas of my life, I have only found peace or satisfaction when I’ve found a middle ground.
I have also never been able to stomach arguments that lay the blame for the damage social media causes solely at the feet of the monolithic technology companies. I am also comfortable accepting that there are many nasty tricks, disguised as revenue-generating features, that bring out the worst in us. I was no less likely to fall victim to them than anyone else.
In abandoning social media for a while, I reckoned with both of those things and I knew I had to find something resembling personal accountability and a dedicated practice that made me a little less vulnerable to being at the mercy of all those nasty tricks. Without any idea of how well it would work, I chose to develop a discipline around reading books again. Based on nothing but recent success in setting a goal to do something hard, I decided to try and read the Ockham Awards fiction long-list. There was nothing more to this than knowing I managed to do the 12 kilometre run at the Auckland Marathon last November by first signing up to do it.
Reading is repair for me now. It is an antidote. It’s where I find my middle ground, both in what I read and mysterious ways in which it seems to make me less prone to crying about the entire world in Wellington restaurants.
Everything I loved about reading books as a kid remains true. The romantic elements of imagination and escapism. The development of empathy and understanding. The shaping and reshaping of identity and the ownership of stories as a form of sovereignty.
But for me this year, books have served a more practical function. With no science legs to stand on, I truly believe they’ve been an instrument of cognitive repair. A cure for a broken brain.
Many of the intangible wonders of reading books can be found in other art forms. Deriving status from, or feeling smart about, owning or consuming them is not the exclusive domain of the written, printed word either.
What is more unique is the practice of reading. The plodding discipline of turning one page after another. The reliance on the parts of your brain that form pictures based on nothing but the repeated and artful arrangement of the alphabet. The sheer dedication to one world and the discipline of resisting the temptation to look at your phone to hop from one branch to another without stopping to sit for a while.
I’ve read 20 books so far this year. I make no apologies for starting my rehabilitation with a family saga in which everybody seems to eat a light goat’s cheese salad and drink dry white wine when emotionally distressed. I am not sorry about basing long conversations on the revelations I discovered in the pages of Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This or Jia Tolentino’s The I in the Internet. I read and enjoyed the Ockhams’ fiction long list with the same enthusiasm I had for Ramona and Anne, rendering me the least critical person in the room at the awards last week.
Reading is repair for me now. It is an antidote. It’s where I find my middle ground, both in what I read and mysterious ways in which it seems to make me less prone to crying about the entire world in Wellington restaurants. The things it used to say about me don’t matter as much. I don’t care if I sound smart. The performance of it is secondary to the practice.
It started with the Seven Sisters and I hope it never ends again.
