I hate New Year's resolutions. I think they are a recipe for failure and that they're also, somehow, an excuse for it. No one sticks to their New Year's resolutions, and because no one does, it's become ok not to.
However, every year I find myself making a few New Year's resolutions anyway, which I'll break in a few months time.
This year I made two New Year's resolutions (actually, that's a lie: I made just one, and today I decided to exercise another).
The first New Year's resolution I have (technically) broken already, but there's a chance that I could (technically) unbreak it.
It was to read one book per week this year. The reason I made this resolution is that I've noticed my reading (of books) has decreased massively in the last 5 years, and that saddens and angers me. I only read consistently when I go home. When I say I've technically broken this resolution it's because so far, I'm a little over one book in. I should be reading my fifth book this week. Doesn't look good does it? The fact is I could still make it back, if I read a couple of books a week for five weeks during the year. This isn't unlikely, given that I read a lot more when I'm on vacation... but then again, I do tend to adopt longer reads when I'm on vacation. We'll see.
The second one is proving incredibly hard, not exactly more than I thought it would, but in a different way than I thougth it would. I decided I would cut back on my phone and internet usage.
The two resolutions are clearly related. Anytime I'm on the Internet or on my phone (like right now), I'm not reading. Of course, I use the internet a lot in my day to day. I use it for work (it has made papers a lot more available than they were), I use it to organise (I send more e-mails per day than I like to admit), I use it to keep, not in touch, but aware of what friends close adn far are doing. All of these things on their own are fine. I also use the internet to randomly scorll through Twitter and Facebook and read "opinion pieces". And here begin my problems with the internet. Any time I spend reading opinion pieces I'm not reading a book. But reading is reading! Right? Wrong.
The problem with opinion pieces (just like this one) is that there are too many people writing them. Anytime something happens that's worth a group's attention, not one or two but hundreds of opinion pieces sprout. A lot of them are unintentional copies of each other, and a lot of them are simply an extension of essays or books written years ago by others, the same reasonings applied to new events. And part of the problem is that everyone feels entitled to give their opinion. And of course, everyone is. But it's a matter of readers as well. Why should I read a piece? In the case of a fiction book, I read for enjoyment, for the pure joy of reading, because the author is fantastic and what they write speaks to me, entertains me, makes me feel more alive, shows me the world, explains history, tells me about the future, because every good fiction book has at its core an important reflection about human nature. But when it comes to opinion pieces this is not always so. People write them because they are angry, or sad, or happy about something, but mostly, people write them to convince others (and sometimes themselves) of what they are saying, they write it for an audience. And the question becomes, why should I listen to your opinion? I am not reading for enjoyment anymore (although, of course I am, beautifully written opinion pieces are art in themselves), I am reading to understand the authors view and to agree (or disagree with it). I am reading to discuss. But in order for this to be valuable, the author should have something to show other than their writing. If I'm going to listen to your opinion on, say, global warming, I expect you to know more about the matter than I do. If you're just someone off the street who's become angry about it and without informing themselves has written a 1000 word essay about the evils of global warming without fact checking any of it, why should I listen to you? And this is the problem. Everyone feels that they have the right to express their opinion on anything.
And this is OK. I will be the last person to say these opinion pieces are unimportant. I think they are essential to the people who write them, in fact, I know they are. When I write something in my blog it's not becacuse I want other people to read it or because I think it's worth their time (though I do enjoy it when they do, and especially when they like it or it sparks discussion), I write it because I want to get my thoughts down, organised and clear. Of course, I could always not publish my posts, but the fact is, writing with the possibility of being read is different to writing for myself, and it's an important exercise for me, as it is for many others. There's nothing wrong with writing, but I do think that for a lot of us, it is a waste of our time to read many of these pieces. It's OK when it's just one or two, but our Facebook feeds, our Twitter timelines, even major newspapers, have become full of them. Quite honestly, I don't need so many opinions on so many different topics, and I definitely don't need to read so many opoinion pieces on the same topic. I'd rather read a longer, well written, informed essay than one hundred opinion pieces that someone just decided to write.
In any case, reading all of these opinion pieces, as a default, is really just another way of procrastinating for me. It's easier than sitting down and concentrating on a book, the same way that watching Netflix is. It's easier to do that than to write. It's easier to read these pieces and have a discussion with a friend about whether they contain logically valid arguments than it is to sit down and do some work, or read a longer book, or write something myself.
And this I don't like. I'd like that a lot of the time I've spent in the last three or four years reading perfectly valid but forgettable opinion pieces, I'd spent reading books. Truly enjoying, concentrating, lost in the past or the future or another parallel time altogether.
So those are the two New Year's Resolutions. I'll keep you updated.
