I don't remember when was the last time that I had a library card. It may have been in middle school; when I had school assignments and summer reading. To say the truth it never felt like an obligation to read, I always loved to do it.

I always loved to look behind the book cover to see which other kids read this book before me, always loved to be the first kid to borrow a new book in the library and to be the first one to open the pages wide open and deep sniff those pages and smell the aroma of a new book.

The years went by and I kept reading but now I had the power to buy my own books and build the library that once I dreamed of. For years I had every single book that I ever wanted; my ideal library was pretty and perfect, all my books were organized by gender, buy size, and color. I only had one problem, I couldn't read as fast as I was buying it, I was obsessed with following the trends and reading the latest best-seller but the real deal was that I couldn't physically read that many books.

Almost two years ago I moved over the sea with only 2 suitcases, I brought with me 4 pairs of shoes, all my summer clothes since it was summer in the US, a few winter items, and a big clay water filter. That was the moment that I realized that I couldn't bring any of my books with me; my precious collection, hundreds of books that will be never read, hundreds of os mysteries that I will never know.

Since I moved a lot changed, everything that I knew about myself changed, and the books that I was interested in changed too.

In my school years, I liked action, adventures, mysteries, fantasy, and novels. When I went to college everything that I was reading was related to fashion in some way, related to slow fashion and environment. Since I moved away from my family and friends I started to look for answers to everything that I was feeling and experiencing that was different than everything I ever knew, so I jumped to the self-help books.

When I moved I was already in my transition of consuming less and trying a low waste lifestyle, so I decided to no purchase more books, instead, I started exchanging books with one of my friends whenever I finished reading a book and she wanted I would just give and she would do the same. I started buying ebooks too and start reading from my tablet since I wasn't thinking about purchasing a reader, but recently I read a book that talks about how bad are the actions we take using the internet/cloud could affect the environment so I decided to slow down my technology consumption.

What to do to keep reading and not harm the environment, the answer couldn't be more simple; a library card. I don't know how that wasn't an option for me anymore, I always had some sort of excuses to not go to the library anymore " it is too far", "they don't have this latest book", "they won't be mine ", "I can order it online and will be here tomorrow"...

I am done with excuses now. I don't want a pile of unread books in my home, I don't want more resources to be taken off the earth to make me a new book. I just want the knowledge that I can gain from going to the library, to know and be part of my community, learn how to share once again, and explore all the worlds hidden behind the library books pages.

3/30/2022 Update: One of my childhood friends that are also part of the zero waste community highly recommended kindle (we bought purchased it second-hand), now we share an online library. We live fairways but we still have a sense of community when we can read the same books, save money and we are so lucky of sharing the same interests.