As a millennial growing up pre-social media and smart phones, I vividly remember the deep connection I was able to form with books while reading.

The world outside disappeared, and I was enveloped in an experience that was not my own but allowed me to feel tethered to something that housed little pieces of life in its own way. It was such a different existence and time, and I remember how rabid I was to consume book after book. Feeling the raw disorientation after closing one book glittering with Gothic atmosphere and bloodsoaked vampires and finding myself in harsh reality almost as if blinking awake from a dream only to hungrily grab the next tome calling my name and dive into a town full of secrets and mayhem. Reality was more of a waystation between stories. But when I was present in reality, I was fully present. Life was vibrant and tangible.

Now, I feel like a shell in my own life. It's so hard to connect to anything anymore. I feel like I pass through stories the way a ghost passes through walls. Even reality doesn't feel as real and I'm constantly chasing that same vibrancy and connection I had with life and fiction in the way someone scavenges for scraps when they're starved. I want to feel how I used to feel instead of hollow and drained of hope. I want my life to be so much more but when life seems to exist on screens more than in person, it feels like something essential is missing. I so desperately want to find it again.

It's not lost on me that I'm writing this on a screen, but Pagebound seems like home to me as a millennial reader. It seems the best tool at my disposal to help me connect to books to some degree. But I am finding myself moving more and more toward the idea of ditching my smart phone and getting a flip phone and moving more and more away from the current set up of society. I fear life as I know it to be currently can no longer sustain me. I need something more.

Sorry for the long essay-like rant. I'm wondering… Can anyone else relate to what I'm feeling?

If so, have there been any changes you've made to help you get to a place where you're more satisfied with life? Or has there been any way you've been able to recapture those lost feelings and rebuild that ability to connect?