After a few months of toiling and tweaking, I'm excited to announce that I've got some new merch available on the site!
In the digital age, reading is an act of rebellion.
Scrolling can be entertaining, but after staring at my phone for too long, I feel dull and dumb.
To fight this ever-tempting cure for boredom, I usually carry a paperback wherever I go. Because if I have time for the screen, I have time to read.
While immersed in a book, we are collaborators, working with an author to co-create an imagined reality. And imagination, like a muscle, wastes away if left unused.
I can’t count the ways reading has improved my life.
In grade school, I devoured every Goosebumps story R.L. Stine released, using my mind to conjure monsters and demon-possessed Halloween masks.
Next, I dove into the Redwall series, where anthropomorphized creatures faced off in medieval-style combat.
My Stephen King chapter followed, which led to other authors, and now, at thirty-nine years old—after McCarthy, Morrison, Baldwin, O’Connor, and Vuong—my to-be-read list only continues to grow.
In addition to strengthening our capacity for imagination, reading increases attention span, lowers blood pressure, and cultivates empathy, which, if you’ve spent a millisecond in the modern world, you’ll agree is in short supply.
Also, if reading non-fiction, we might even learn something!
When I’m on public transit, at a park, or at the bar, for every fifty people who’re lost in their phones (myself sometimes included!), there’s often a single soul hallucinating via the drug of a dog-eared novel.
These people make me feel less alone.
They also give me hope.
If you’re one of the few and the proud—the reading rebel in a crowd of obedient screens—here’s a clothing design for you; a badge of honor available in t-shirts, hoodies, and tank-tops.
Thanks to Seattle-based polymath and all-around badass Sara Camille for bringing it to life!
You can browse designs by clicking the “merch” tab.