I am a longtime self-proclaimed bookworm.

For as long as I can remember, books have meant more to me than any other material object—all the extra money I had went towards 30 percent off Target books and those little clip-on book lights. A trip to Borders bookstore was like a pilgrimage to Mecca.

From the time I learned to read to the age of maybe 13, I carried two books with me everywhere I went. That way if I finished my current book, I had a backup. This method worked beautifully, too; when I was 10 and wound up in the emergency room with a sizable chunk of wood in my foot, I had three books ready to go in the car.

No matter where I was—ER, birthday party, restaurant, Disney World—I was reading. I had a voracious hunger to read, to see what else was out there in black ink. At times, of course, I was a little too hungry. I used to sneak reading under my desk during math class until my teacher caught me and tapped me on the shoulder, taking my book to his desk with the promise that I’d get it back at the end of the day.

I felt like if I wasn’t reading, I was thinking about my current book and what would happen next or what my teacher would recommend for me to read when I finished. My fingers itched to feel the pages and I’d be restless without the reassuring weight of a few books in my backpack. I loved everything about reading: the way you could get lost in a book to the point where you’d feel dazed and confused when you closed it, the way books could subtly teach you more concrete information than your teachers ever could, the way some books became as treasured as friends. Every book I read was a new conquest, something I loved so deeply it became visceral.

But now I am 20-years-old and I don’t get that feeling anymore.

I have lost that passion and I don’t know how to find it again.

Don’t get me wrong—I still love to read, still love books and still get excited to find new reads.

But it isn’t quite the same. Some part of me thinks I’ve become jaded and lazy in that I don’t want to sift through books I think I won’t entirely enjoy to find the gems. That didn't matter so much when I was younger; everything was new, so everything I read had value. But now I know what I like too well, and I am less inclined to go out on a limb and test out a new genre or style because I am accustomed to what I know.

Another part of me wonders if it is academia that has jaded me, if I really have become so burnt out from schoolwork that I can’t enjoy leisurely reading. This is a popular theory among students, but I don’t think it has much merit. Yes, school is demanding, but I don’t think it’s demanding enough to burn out such a bright spark.

We must also, of course, consider the effects of technology. It seems that it is the new buzzword cause for everything that has changed nowadays, but not without substantiation. When we were bored ten years ago, we were much more likely to pick up a book after scrolling through the TV channels for the tenth time. Now we move immediately to our phones and social media- it's quick, it's easy, and it's mindless. Our brains are wired to automatically go for instant gratification over something it needs to work for, which pushes reading to the back burner.

This theory goes hand in hand with the lack of time claim, that there just isn’t enough time or energy left in the day to sit down and enjoy a book. When I was younger and in the full throes of my book addiction, I remember being completely baffled as to why my parents never read and why it took so long for my mom to get through the books I recommended for her. As I get older, I understand this more and more, which gives me an unerring feeling of dismay. Am I really destined to say goodbye to powering through a book a week and instead accept the reality of only having time to read in the summer? Or on the train as I commute? I tell myself all the time that my loss of fervor is just a passing phase, that college is demanding enough to take my focus away from things like books for a while, but I still hear the whisper in the back of my mind that maybe this is just the new default and I have to rekindle the passion myself.

And I'm convinced that it's something worth saving. We wouldn't have all the great literature we do if it weren't for people working to preserve their love of books throughout their lives. Books are special, and and my passion for them is one I am not willing to lose.

I’m not too worried, though. In the words of the great J.K. Rowling, “I believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book.”