Confession Time

Download. Delete. Download. Delete. Download. Delete. That’s my love hate relationship with Amazon Kindle and Epub Readers. One of the guilty pleasures that I have been battling with since time immemorial is the reading of romance novels. I love love. I love a great love story and I love reading.

In O Level, I was introduced to Mills & Boons and other explicit novels. That genre of literature became my drug. One book led to another until roots, deep roots of this habit penetrated within. I would escape to a world of my own where boy meets girl. The two fall madly in love and then live happily ever after; not missing the inevitable interludes of love fights. With all those predictable plots, my default fall back guilty pleasure has been a romance novel. Back in school, my fellow addicts and I even had an informal book club; we literally knew each other and would swap novels. The unlimited supply of this drug was neither the school library nor bookstore. We would wrap the book covers with papers to disguise our guilty pleasure from judgmental eyes.

Then I graduated to Amazon Kindle and Epub Readers. Some times all I was left with to read were the new releases[only free books, at least I have never paid]. This online terrain is quite difficult to navigate with LGBT novels displayed everywhere, infiltrating virtual libraries. Yes, I know the books I was looking for, but my eyes met with those cover pages in my hunting efforts. If I didn’t know what I was looking for, I would have added salt to my stale wound. Plus there’s a way romance novels portray that fulfilment can be found in wealth and love yet that’s not the case. God is the ultimate source of our satisfaction. There’s a way they become your treasure, for where they are there your heart will be. My devotion time was replaced with chapters of novels during certain seasons.

In a class we recently had on addictions, our moderator said, “A person can sin for an addiction.” Many are the times I have binged on novels even with continued convictions from the Holy Spirit. However, with divine intervention, I end up deleting all the book reading Apps. Relapse, download, delete. It’s been a long vicious cycle. Some time this year, I confesed to my little sister about my struggle. Lucky for her, she had overcome this habit before it ever went out of hand. She advised me to ask God to change my desires. I should say He has. Since May 2023, I have not yet relapsed. My pleasure reading is now on Blogging Sites which is a healthier option if you ask me. I get all the best stories and laughs. There’s no greater love story than a writer’s. I don’t mean fictional but real love. Plus blogs offer a lot of personal development content. Maybe my new guilty pleasure is blogs.

Disclaimer: I don’t plan on ever giving up my second guilty pleasure.

There are days I wake up craving to chill with nothing. Those lazy days when I indulge in sleeping in, doing absolutely nothing, choosing whom to talk to, getting knocks on my door, “Winnie, breakfast is ready.” A few hours later, “Winnie, lunch is set.” There are days I wake up, when the only need I will respond to is my need to rest. Listening to the state of my emotions. Breaking away from the monotony of daily routines. There are days I wake up and my entire to do list screams, CHILLING WITH NOTHING! Such days rejuvenate me. They give me momentum to keep pursuing what’s before me. I hate extended periods of monotony by the way. It dulls me to know exactly what I have to do, when and how to do it; without any exciting venture in the near future. If I can, I bend the rules abit to be set free, even if it’s just for a day.