I find it hard to think independently. Even when I successfully unplug my brain from external stimuli, I can still feel their influence, like a train whirring down the tracks even after the engine is extinguished. That leads to my actual point, which is that when I find myself stuck succumbed to the influences of the outside world I have a difficulty differentiating what makes me me from what I’m influenced to be.

Now, I'm not one of those people who reads 50 books a year. I'm not even one of those people who pledges to read 50 books a year and fails. I'm closer to the average adult who hasn't read anything longer than four pages since school. Or, at least I was. These days I make a conscious effort to read something every. single. day. I guess by some methods of accounting you could say I was already reading something every day. But, when I don't count Twitter (or anything else with a news feed) it gets pretty bleak.

School teaches us that every question has an answer. It’s supposed to teach us how to think, and I’m not here to say that it doesn’t, but it has the consequence of teaching people black and white thinking. When I’m in conversation with a friend and they use a word wrong or text me a typo a sign flashes in my mind THAT IS NOT CORRECT. How does this help me to connect with the person across from me? It doesn’t. In the real world there’s (at least 50) shades of grey. There’s multiple answers to questions. There’s some questions that don’t have answers. Focusing on what’s RIGHT or CORRECT is a distraction. Instead focus on what’s MEANINGFUL to the question being asked.