Read-a-thon #1

I started this 24-hour Read-a-thon challenge on 25^th August, 2019 at 18:00, precisely.

            I landed upon this YouTube channel by Helly one day and this girl posts Book reviews and all that in her channel. (She owns a huge bookshelf full of books, which I am jealous about, totally) So in one of her videos she did this Read-a-thon challenge and posted that video. After seeing that I was like, ‘I have to do this,’ and that is how it came about.

            I scheduled my time to start and then chose my books to read. After creating all the hype in WhatsApp (just so I would stick to my plan) at 18:00 I started Looking for Alaska by John Green. Normally it would take me hours to complete a book and I would not read only one book at any given time.

              Also, I would read a sentence and go back again to read something that caught my eye. Because, it is always awesome to read slowly and absorb the words and let them sink in and reread sentences that stood out. Simply put, if words were food I will never give a second glance to chocolate ice cream.

            Well, this challenge was a little bit different because I was trying to read fast and I had a target to reach. And the excitement grew as time passed. The best part was reading after lights-off at night. Unfortunately, I have to think about the blue light radiating from my mobile screen and so I had to call it a night at 00:00.

            I woke up at 05:00 in the morning. Though our house-owner is a greedy irritating man alive and thinks his rat hole of a house as a palace, the view from our terrace is awesome. I mean, he has not yet found a way to build one more floor over there.

            It was amazing looking up at the sky from our terrace. The stars and moon were literally glittering and man, it was just so amazing.

            After having freshened up I resumed my book by 05:22. I was switching between the two books back and forth, yes. From then on, except for the routine chore at home, I was pretty much just reading. By 13:37, I finished ‘Looking for Alaska’ with so much emotions and thoughts; which I had to put on hold, because I had another book to go. After lunch, I resumed ‘The Son of Neptune’.

            After the great battle at Alaska, my Read-a-thon came to an end by 26^th August, 2019 at 19:10, successfully.

Speculation:

Now the important section of this post, my speculations! The overall experience with this challenge was enlightening. There is just so much to learn!

            All the things that we do now, what do they amount to? We put ourselves in this ‘Labyrinth of endless suffering’ but what is the way out? What is the purpose of our existence, when we can just be gone, in flick of a second?

            Neither the beginning nor the destination matters, it is the journey that counts. Life can look totally and utterly screwed up. But that is part of the journey as well. How else would we know the fun of screwing up? Try as we might to find one, but there is really no rulebook for perfect-life and there is no such thing as ‘perfect life’.

           So I think we should just be a wanderer and wander the entire universe as much as we can, and, when we get stuck in the ‘Labyrinth of suffering’, we get out of it ‘Straight and Fast’

            Just one more thing, none of us are alone.

          All of us have got generations of awesome legacy running in our veins. We are born to be awesome! Don’t forget that.

Challenge Courtesy: Though I hate Helly for hating Chetan Bhagat’s Half Girlfriend 

and despise her for calling John Green’s Fault in our Stars not-so-interesting, I am grateful for introducing this challenge to me. It was fun and without doubt, awesome.

Love,

-Sp-