I can’t bring myself to write non-fiction these days–my thoughts, I mean. Opinions. Even these little, infrequent posts are tortuous because they are meaningless, in the scheme of things. Words flood the world now. Readers scroll and scroll. I don’t know what the readers/viewers are looking at when they scroll. I wonder, when I see them, if they are bored.

Though I use my commute-time to write fiction, there are long minutes during the commute when I cannot sit and open my computer, and that is when I scroll on my phone. When I’m standing in the ferry terminal, waiting for the glass doors to open, I scroll and scroll on FB or Twitter, mostly bored. Sometimes I am not bored, like when I’m researching facts for stories, or sending out a story, or typing an email to a friend. But often, I am scrolling.

My phone broke a couple of weeks ago, and during my phone-less, standing minutes, I completed All the Light We Cannot See. Yes, it was another weighty thing in my bag, but my life is now changed, not in any remarkable way, but in the way that comes when I step away from the scrolling through all the words that fill my eyes and step into all the words that fill my mind.  I also finished a slim book, a little gem called Heat by Stephanie Dickinson.

I’ve got a new phone now. It’s bigger and faster. I haven’t read any books since I got it. But I will, I will.