The Blog

I am reading books and MDN web docs

It's funny. No matter where you go, or how many books you read, you still know nothing, you haven't seen anything. And that's life.

I listen to a fair amount of music. In the last year, at my peak, I listened to 4,346 minutes of music in a month from 746 different artists. This is not a lot when compared to some of my friends, it’s still quite a bit. Compared to the average listening time in India, it’s 650% more. I have often found myself looking through this data that spotify provides. I feel a sense of satisfaction looking at those numbers go up.

More recently though I have started to feel that all of this, music and internet in general, is a never ending avalanche of information that I never asked for. I don’t listen to music that I enjoy, I listen to the music that spotify gives me and I may end up enjoying it. Out of 746 artists, I only ended up liking 2, so the time I spent listening to music wasn’t really worth it. On the other hand I can not help it, access to new information has never been easier with big banners announcing what’s latest. In 2024 alone, 1.7 million new artists joined and approximately 112,000 new tracks were uploaded every day across streaming platforms in 2023.^[1] I feel this self imposed pressure of consuming whatever is new. Initially it was enjoyable because suddenly I was listening to a lot of new styles, over the years it has become something that does not feel novel at all. I really miss when I had a walkman with 40-50 songs that I would listen to for months.

This trend has trickled down to other parts of the internet as well, majorly because of short form content. I am not talking about the algorithm driven nature that platforms have employed or the “short attention span” problem it is creating. I am talking about a very different consequence, that I am bombarded with a new information every 20 seconds. It’s really an endless catalogue of information with no time to think before moving on to the next one. Out of the 500 reels I see in a day, I probably remember 1 or 2. Everything else feels like a version of something I have already seen. I was speaking to Y about this and he said “it’s like I don’t know what to feel. I am watching a reel about kids dying in war which is sad and the next minute I am laughing at a stupid meme”. That added another layer to this that I had never thought about.

I don’t think this is a problem for most people though. Not everyone listens to so much music like I do and if they do I hope it’s something they want to listen to. T listens to undertale and halo theme songs on repeat and I think I should start doing the same.

In my attempt to stay away from social media and spotify so that I don’t feel like I am swimming in an ocean of overwhelming information, I have started reading again. Properly this time. I am terrible at reading. I take months to finish a book or even years sometimes but I decided to commit to reading shortly before I started travelling but I failed. I forgot to carry my Sherlock Holmes - The Complete Collection by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that I was reading before leaving from Bangalore. I was planning to read it during my trip. After that I gave up on the idea of reading again, until recently when I had to catch train.
My problem with trains is that it’s long hours of doing nothing. I have to lie down and wait for my destination. It’s so boring that I dread the idea of trains that take longer than a few hours. So I bought a copy of Days at the Morisaki Bookshop to kill time. I was hoping to read it for a while but I almost reached the end in two days. I was surprised at myself. I did not know this was even possible because most of the time I have to read the same sentence 10 times since I was not paying attention. Maybe the book was good or maybe I read a lot because there was nothing else to do I don’t know. (Well the book is actually good, the most enjoyable that I have read in a while.)

Having learnt of this new ability, I decided to read more. In Guwahati I visited The Buddha Grove, a bookshop run by a very passionate guy. The place sold books yes but more than that I think the guy just wants more people to read. I bought the The Trial, I had always wanted to read it, and The Hitopadesa (it was cheap). Though it’s time consuming and sometimes not fun, I have been enjoying it as an alternate form of entertainment since I am avoiding music and shows/movies.

Recently I have started reading the MDN web Docs. I am trying to learn about the web and frontend and though I have always been told to not get into the details, it bugs me to not know how things work. To be fair MDN also feels like an endless catalogue of information but I am choosing to go through it and with how slow I read it’s impossible for me to go to the next page within 20 seconds or a minute (or 5 for that matter).

I don’t like giving my books to others, though I may never read them. I gave Days at the Morisaki Bookshop to N. I met him in Kolkata and he ended up being one of the few people I enjoyed talking to during my travel so I wanted to give him something before leaving. Looking at my bag, among chargers, lotion and a rock that I picked up from Victoria Memorial only the book made sense.

References

1. https://soundcamps.com/blog/spotify-statistics/
Note: Spotify does not officially report streaming data so I had to look through 3rd party sources and they all agreed on this number.