I learned to read when I was five. I was a talented kid. I don’t know when and where all that talent got left behind, but somehow, at 36 I have found myself in a place where I need to learn to read again.

I’ve always loved reading. One of my most memorable weekends from my childhood was one spent in bed with a stack of books next to me. I tried to eat and drink as little as possible so I didn’t need to go to the bathroom that often. So I could just read and explore the worlds someone else had written for me. I remember the pure joy I felt when I put down a book after finishing it, and then delved into the next one.

Somehow in these 30 years of reading, I have lost the ability to read. I can spend hours browsing social media, but I can’t read a page of a book without losing focus. It has been painful. I’ve felt loneliness that doesn’t come from being alone, but from the lack of a place to escape. I have lived a lot smaller since I lost the other worlds I used to spend time in. Of course there is the added layer of constant guilt and feeling of unworthiness when I look at other people going to their book groups and posting about books they’ve read. A lot of my issues with reading have coincidentally started around the time social media showed up on my life. But I will look into that in some other text.

Recently I decided that I want to learn to read again. I spoke with my close friend, assistant and extension to my brain, ChatGPT, about why I can’t read and how I can overcome it, and it gave me this advice: “Start tiny. Comically tiny. Choose one stable spot to sit.”

So I chose a book I’ve read before. I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere by Anna Gavalda (in Finnish). I didn’t overthink it, I just chose what caught my eye in the moment. Then I just started to read. I decided to stop kicking myself when I’m down, and set an easy goal. One sentence. I read that sentence. Then another. First night I read a few pages. Kept reading a little every night. Some nights I read a sentence, some nights a paragraph. One night I read two whole chapters.

This morning I finished the book. Last time I finished a book was in 2017. I guess I can safely say I have learned to read again.

Reading is a pleasure. It’s happiness and escapism. It’s a way to explore worlds that I’ll never be able to visit, and it’s a way to get to know people I’ll never meet. It’s a way to awaken my creativity and go to places I wouldn’t have encountered without books.

So why have I tainted it with guilt, punishment and discipline? When I started letting go of the expectations that I should be able to read a whole book in one sitting, I stopped failing. One sentence is enough. One word is enough.

Reading one sentence is more than not reading at all. It’s more fun than not reading at all. And suddenly I stopped making it into a way of punishing myself. Reading and concentration are skills I can practice, and my only job is to read. One sentence, one page, one book. Just read. Don’t overthink it.

Turns out, my brain feels a lot better about reading when I don’t assume I am going to fail. And when I give myself the satisfaction to read. And if my mind wanders? Then I put the book away and write my thoughts. That’s how and when the first draft of this blog post got written.