>>53577342>had the school system not drilled it into my head that it was always a passion-free, soulless actThat was me with reading. Anything of interest to me was not allowed at school and if you couldn't read it in school it didn't count for at home reading assignments either, and since there was only so much time in the day it wasn't even worth reading it on my own time. Couldn't check out anything above or below grade level, comics were banned outright, and they didn't keep licensed books for shows or games or anything, so all I learned was reading sucked. In 1st grade when we were being taught to read I was quickly banned from books with dragons or birds because that's all I wanted to read about so my teacher would pick books for me. By time I had access to the public library I had already given up. I still loved stories, if someone was reading to me I'd listen, but even that got frustrating - teachers would always call on kids who needed practice, and if it was a book the teacher was reading it'd just be certain chapters as examples for what we were focusing on and we'd never finish it. I didn't willingly pick up a book until 6th grade, even then it was out of sheer boredom the last few days of school where it was just parties while the teacher finished grades because I had no friends and nothing else to do. Then I was introduced to anime as like a thing (as opposed to just cartoons that happen to be from Japan) and read a handful of manga just to get the whole story to participate in online discussions, fanfiction soon after, but since I already had it in my head I hated reading I didn't explore it much. In college I got into older fandoms with more experienced audiences and started reading/writing with them which encouraged me to try books. About a month ago I printed out one of my favorite fics of all time to bind and have on my shelf - about 60k words, and seeing how thick it is made me realize at the age of 29 that I actually do love to read.
