The Kindle Chronicle
A purchase that came with endless questions
I was still in my first year of middle school when I saw the Kindle’s advertisement on a local news magazine for the first time. Knowing a device that offers the digital experience reading was a strange thing. Is it good for the eyes? How do people flip the pages? Does it offer a similar calming sensation from not smelling the ivory papers? How many books can I carry at once?
But then, no matter how the tempting the review was, the Kindle was a luxury good that was out of reach for a schoolgirl. I spent years growing into a young adult who built a mild attachment towards books. I did not buy books on a regular basis. I could not strictly choose between reading, drawing, and doing make-up. Out of the blue, my collection of books grew into boxes and shelves that I could not manage well.
The years slowly passed by. Life seemed like a rush when I was finally employed in Jakarta after finishing grad school in 2019. Living in the suburb made me leave my house only around twenty minutes after the fajr prayer to catch the train. In addition, mostly I could leave the office only after six in the evening, which left me like a potato after arriving at home two and a half hours later.
I felt lost and needed to rediscover my inner strength in between the long hours of commuting. So I started to take a look at my books again and a brand-new book pouch that I brought from a book reviewer in Bali. I made the attempt to read at least five pages while standing or sitting on the crowded train. Then I quickly realized that I love doing this, but somehow there is an urgency to fill up my thirst for knowledge without any fuss. And from there came my decision to purchase the Kindle that I once longed for.
Soon, I no longer visit book stores, except for buying books in Indonesian and stationery supplies. I nearly forget the sentimental feelings of flipping the pages of old books and peeping the notes that I once took. I am in the middle of epistemic emotion that is oddly spread by a black rectangle that I only have to charge once a month.
Killing time by reading is not new to me. However, keeping the same habit as an adult is like stepping up the game of self-entertaining. As a person who tries as much as possible to minimize screen time to maintain the attention span, reading is a helpful habit. In a not so surprising way, reading kept me sane during a business trip that took more approximately eight hours without a proper signal from Entikong to Pontianak.
Owning an electronic reader reminds me of a course that rarely got my attention during my master’s degree. In my second semester, I took a course title Technology and Social Change. Driven by a good perception just because I was familiar with the textbook, I ended up being surprised that a whole series of classes ended up like a marathon of self-reflection.
Aside from enjoying the feeling of drowning in my sea of thoughts, this device led me to think about the way I value my financial resource. I am glad that I am finally able to reach the point where I do not have to worry about my book hauls. It is easy to allocate a certain amount of money into a dedicated account that is connected with my Kindle.
The same notion could be probably related to how I project the near future. Since my college days, I never put getting married as a priority. Hence, in a natural way, plotting the future for my personal path is just like a piece of cake. I want to do a Ph.D. I can think about saving for a career break. I aim for pursuing science communication.
These combinations appear as pop quizzes in my midnight thoughts. Do I actually fit the Indonesian standard of being an adult? Is it normal to prioritize my education above saving for a privately-owned property? Am I purely a lucky kid who does not have to worry about ‘normal’ adult kinds of stuff?
Adults are weird, in a way or two.
