(in)consistency

A little while back, as both an impulse purchase and a treat for myself after winning the Portside Review Human Rights Essay Prize, I marched off an MRT and into a Challenger, where I bought a Kobo Clara Colour.

Did I need a new ereader? No. I already have a Kindle Oasis from a few years back, when Amazon offered to replace my wonky Paperwhite and I decided to upgrade to a nicer model while I was at it. And honestly, over the past couple of years I’d mostly read ebooks via the Kindle app on my phone, simply because the phone was the device already in my hand. And also because the Kindle app allows for continuous scrolling, which means I can trick my brain into feeling like I’m doomscrolling social media even while I’m reading a book.

But, on and off over the years, I’ve coveted the OverDrive integration that Kobo has—borrowing library books directly! from! the! ereader!—and toyed with the idea of making the switch. So I decided on the spot that day that I was going to do it.

I bought the Kobo Clara Colour, then went home and spent hours downloading every book from my Kindle library (I’m a book hoarder, so there was a lot), loading them on to Calibre and tidying up the metadata before manually loading them on to my shiny new ereader. And just like that, I was into ereaders again. Phone app what? I don’t know them.

Things went swimmingly for awhile. I was really basking in my self-righteous satisfaction of leaving Jeff Bezos in the dust. Who knows, one day he might really really want something but just be $12.99 short and that would be because of me. Muahahahahaha, take that! (Okay, this was never going to happen but you’ve got to let a girl have her dreams about eating the rich.)

Then one day, when the time came to start reading the advanced review copy of a book I’m supposed to write about for Mekong Review, I discovered that, not only does the Kobo app on the phone not sync uploaded PDFs with the ereader, the Kobo app doesn’t even save your page.

I ended up having to download the Kindle app again so I could read and highlight PDFs nicely. And once the Kindle app reclaimed the bytes it’d previously occupied on my phone, I started wondering if I really wanted to abandon the Kindle after all. If I’m already back using the app, doesn’t it make sense to continue using the ereader that syncs nicely with it? Plus, I can email files to my Kindle from wherever, whereas, if I want to add anything I didn’t buy from the Kobo store, I’d have to actually plug the Kobo into my laptop to manually transfer it.

But… the Kobo…

So there I was, with a dilemma entirely of my own making.

The other night, I tried to make up my mind once and for all which ereader I would use. I lay in bed, reading Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's Twitter by Zoë Schiffer, alternating between the Kobo and the Kindle, trying to compare them by functionality, convenience, screen and, perhaps most importantly, ✨vibes✨. It was a mess. I’d read a page on the Kobo, drop it, pick up the Kindle, read another page, then go back to the Kobo. Rinse and repeat. I did that most of the night and still could not come to a conclusion. Both have their pros and cons, but are ultimately solid ereaders. Both are, in many ways, good choices. But the problem with “only good choices” is that it doesn’t help me choose. The only comfort I had at the end of this exercise was that, stupid and self-inflicted though my conundrum might be, it’s nowhere near as stupid and self-inflicted as the decisions Musk made with Twitter. (For one, the Kobo did not cost US$44 billion.)

It’s been a few days and I still haven’t come to a decision. But I’m also starting to see things from a different angle. Sure, there’s some guilt about having made yet another impulse purchase; there are too many of those in my life. And I know where this road leads: blaming myself for my extravagance, my lack of self-discipline, my failure to be a sensible adult. I could trip down this path once more, but I already know that it’ll achieve nothing beyond making myself feel terrible. So I’ve tried to redirect my thoughts.

The first thing I let myself acknowledge was that, while that night of ping-ponging between two ereaders was a mess, it was also enjoyable. There was something really fun about switching between one device and the other; in a weird way it felt like a new thrill every time, even though I was reading the same book. And so it’s been since: I can enjoy the compact quality of the Kobo or satisfy myself with turning pages by pressing buttons on the Kindle. I can appreciate the convenience of the Kobo using USB-C so I don’t have to carry an extra cable out with me or I can benefit from the Kindle’s larger screen. No one said it has to be exclusive, a friend reminded me. There’s no law here; the only person I have to please is me.

I should probably do better at recognising and resisting impulse buys in the future, but the reality is that I’ve already done it this time. I already have these two ereaders. It’s unnecessary but it’s brought some pleasure, joy and relaxation, and I’m back to reading more again. It might not be the most sensible or responsible thing I’ve ever done, but if my current vice is having more than one literature delivery device… I don’t think it’s something I have to beat myself up about. So what if I sometimes pick up the Kobo while going for the Kindle at other times? So what if I start switching between the two mid-chapter?

This is how I am: I pick up a hobby or glom on to something—it could be anything from a notebook to a gadget to a new productivity app—and then I decide that I’m “in this shit for lyfe” and go pretty much all-in because I’m convinced that I’m “investing for the long-term”. (I have soooooo many cross-stitch patterns that I’ll probably end up never doing.) It later turns out that “lyfe” lasts anywhere from three weeks to six months and then I’ll be back on my bullshit again. I bounce between things, switching one way then coming back again some time later. (Case in point: tonight I shifted all my to-dos from Things 3 back to Reminders again, just because I was irked that Things 3 doesn’t let me assign dates to sub-tasks. I’d shifted from Reminders to Things 3 less than seven weeks ago, for reasons I can no longer remember.) I’ve berated myself enough times about not messing around and being more disciplined and on task and committed and not wasting time and it’s never worked, so maybe it’s time to just accept that I might be a messy chaos goblin (but mostly on the inside, because introvert).

Maybe that makes me very inconsistent and indecisive. But do you really need to be consistent and decisive all the time? I’m not sure. Maybe the answer is no.

Possibly.

I think.

~ vibes ~

It’s NMIXX again this time but I’m digging their new title track and if it’s going to be a newsletter about not sticking to a single lane, it seems fitting to share these mixxpop queens.