Paradise Lost

In my BritLit class we were assigned Paradise Lost. I expected it to be respectable and of important literary stature...as all school assigned books are. But I didn't expect to love it, or for it to have such an effect on me.
Somehow, while reading it, I who has never been religious decided I first wanted to get more acquainted with the story of Christianity which is my supposed religious affiliation. I wanted to read the Bible and get the full story of this satirical Paradise Lost. From there I decided I wanted to know the full story of far before that...and well. Not just the jumbled remembrances of a 6th grade class on Neanderthal's and Lucy..but the entire story. And so it began, and it started with Netflix, as many things do. Their watch-instantly selection has an amazing amount of historical documentaries by PBS, Nova, the History Channel, National Geographic, etc, and they are all very interesting. So right after finishing Season Two of Dexter I jumped right into the story of the Sahelanthropus tchadensis to us today, but everything in between. I deleted my Facebook not only because I hated facebook and everything about it, but because it was getting in the way of my documentary watching, book reading and adventuring into the lives of the very first homo sapiens and then later the Egyptians, and then the Greeks and Romans, and that is where I am now.
I used to read two books a week, on average. I hadn't read a book for pleasure in months. Ever since the start of college, and even beginning in my last senior year of high school my reading steadily decreased...and I haven't been sure when I would be able to pick it up again, steadily. I chalked it up to I was able to read that much when life was easy in high school and I didn't have to constantly be doing school work...but I realized it was because my time had been being eaten up by things like facebook...and what was facebook doing for me? Was the information that I was feeding on from it going to get me anywhere in life? Was it going to enrich anything at all except gossip? No...and I was blind to it. Some things become so ingrained in our culture that we don't even realize the true harm behind them, or uselessness. It got to the point that every time I signed on facebook I felt the moment at the end of my life when I look back on all of that wasted time...and wish for it back. There are a lot of things you can do during wasted time that I could bear looking back on when I am laying on my death bed, but sitting on facebook isn't one of them.
So with the time eater of facebook out of the way, I have been able to go on this quest, and have enough time for it between readings and homework and papers for other classes. It has been fun, and I know that it will probably take me years to really really learn everything about...everything. Maybe an entire life time. But I can't wait. I love that so many things can be learned in the world. I wish I could learn all of them, but since that is not possible I'll study for history, and psychology. And just because I have always loved books..also literature. That is what I love most about this time of my life, is that it can be completely devoted to learning whatever it is that I want, and I want to take advantage of it.