Everybody is an '-aholic'

I can no longer deny it. Now it's official: I also have some '-aholics' behind my name. Luckily, I'm not an alcoholic. Neither am I a workaholic. Well, not really. You can't equate studying and writing a thesis with working. No, my addiction takes on another and certainly healthier form, and in fact - let's face it - a quite disturbing one, if you would ask my thesis coordinators. I hope you, my dear reader, are as inventive as I am when it comes to neologisms. Well look, I'm either a 'bookaholic' or a 'blogaholic'. Maybe both. Even a 'languageaholic', possibly. In any case a 'bol.com-aholic'. But not yet a 'thesisaholic', much as I would like to. Recently, I've bought so many new books that my dad had to install an extra bookshelf above my bed, which is now already completely stuffed with new and somewhat older books.

Shortly before going on a holiday, I bought the entire Paulo Coelho Collection - that makes 12 books! While in France, I got myself the entire "Petit Nicholas" collection - some funny stories about a cute, little boy called Nicholas who gets into trouble every now and then, perfect to practice my fossilised French - the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson in English and some other French books, all youth literature, to start at a basic level when it comes to pick up those French pieces I lost during the past 12 years. Back home in Leiden, I started very ambitiously by buying the Start to Bike book. That was quite a good investment, for I'm already in week 4 of the program and all is going very well :) Another one of those ambitious plans was to study languages, or even more, because my goal was to improve the 4 foreign langauges that I already speak. Therefore, the 'languageaholic' part. I bought some books to study Brazilian Portuguese and some more books to study French, and I ended up with 10 study books. Right, maybe a little bit over the top, because, honestly, I can't possibly be studying 10 different books at the same time, even if it's only grammar and vocabulary? But I have to admit it: I am so fond of books that teach you grammar and vocabulary. I think it's just brilliant how almost all different methods work so thoroughly and mostly in an amusing, student-friendly way. 

If that's not already enough study material, I also bought an almost 900 pages thick book about a very interesting, but at the same time quite painful topic: Statistics and SPSS. I need these two for the writing of my thesis, so actually I have no other choice but to surrender to these complicated t-tests, z-transformation and chi square stuff. Not that it's bothering me, I like maths next to learning languages, but still, it's quite a big challenge.

So that certainly makes me a 'bookaholic'. Next to that, I'm also a 'blogaholic' because every day I think about my blog. I check on a daily basis how many views I've had that day. Sometimes it's a disappointing zero, but lately it goes quite well and people from all over the world seem to visit me. I'm on a total of 1332 views since April, so I'm quite happy with that achievement. I want to take this opportunity to thank you all, people from almost every continent of the world, for visiting my blog, I appreciate it!

In Dutch, you have this saying: "A day without laughter is a day wasted". My motto is: "A day without thinking about my blog is a day wasted". Every day I think about new topics, but it's not easy to find some good topics. I mean, it's quite easy to write about a "light" topic, but I also want to tackle those topics that seem to be surrounded by taboos. That was my initial purpose in life, because someone has to do it, right? What's more, it also helps me to cope with my life and the things that have happened since I became a psychiatric patient. 
 
Still, I'm especially a 'bol.com-aholic', because almost all the books I've bought recently were ordered on that website. Do you know bol.com? It's such a nice website, I'm afraid I'm quite addicted to it. Only yesterday, I ordered my 19th article in only 4 months' time. It all started with books, later on I also ordered some CD's and DVD's, even a laptop mouse and some more books. I also ordered some books via Amazon, but the biggest problem is that I don't have a credit card, so I had to borrow my sister's credit card. If I had one myself, I'd probably be an 'amazonaholic' too. Oh, it's so addictive! Buy, buy, buy some more! 

When I went to the gym last Monday, I did a work-out of 60 minutes on the bicycle, and I thought I deserved a reward for that achievement. That's when I bought the first three books of the Inheritance cycle by Paolini, and ordered the fourth and final book on - you guessed it - bol.com. Oh, maybe I spoil myself too much! But what about this: buying books, CDs and DVDs makes me feel extremely happy! I have to admit that I have some thesis issues and sometimes I feel quite unhappy with what I'm doing. That's when I buy myself a reward, because somehow, I keep my head up. You know, once I had the entire Stepen King-collection in Dutch pockets, ánd the entire Pieter Aspe-collection. (Pieter Aspe is a very good Flemish writer, if you understand Dutch and you like detectives and crime novels, you should check him out.) I had to sell them all because of a lack of money and space for all those books. Lately, I exclusively buy books in English in order to practice my English. I don't like reading in Dutch anymore. You hardly learn any new words while reading in Dutch, and that bothers me.

Anyway people, now I want to know what kind of -aholic you are. Are you also a 'bookaholic'? Maybe a 'thesisaholic', which I should now pretend to be? Ore do you stick to the workaholic? Shopaholic? Shoe-aholic? Mobilephone-aholic? Whateveraholic? Let me know and maybe we can be some kind of -aholic together :-)