38 [M4F] Frederick or just texting - Would anyone be interested in reading Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books out loud with me?

I'm actually posting to make friends and to start off with ongoing text chats throughout the day. I like getting a feel for someone through texting and am okay with maintaining a friendship that never advances further than that. I'd prefer 30+ so I don't feel like a creep.

Lately my favorite thing is I've been reading choose-your-own-adventure books out loud over voicechat with a penpal and we work to come to a consensus on each choice. In-person we could just get a library membership, check out a book and grab a room there, but I've got a system worked out for doing it over telegram too. I wrote a dumb little program where I take a pirated pdf and it converts each page in the book into a jpeg (so page 112 would be 112.jpg). I disable the image previews on my computer so I can't see ahead of time if it's an ending page, and put in the chat the picture of the page we've chosen to go to next. We read the page out loud to each other and try to work out which choice makes the most sense.

I've been in recovery from some severe health issues, and finalized my divorce last year. This wasn't really a case of me getting sick and she left, everyone has their limits and she had already taken care of me in 2020 when I had post-covid for a year and a half. 2024 was a really hard year for me, I watched myself weigh on a person trying her absolute best for me until her spirit broke under that weight. I can't say that last year was any more fun, but I am finding my way out. I actually am proud of how far I've come in my healing, but because I'm not all the way to the finish line yet I feel like I should add the baggage disclosure here. If you have your own set of struggles I am very open to listening. I like to believe I have a big heart.

I was a math professor in a past life, but I have not been working while still in recovery. I'm hoping that this summer or fall I can get my foot back in the door with adjunct teaching at the college level again.

I've had to move back in with my folks, eight hours away. Mom's cat allergies meant that the move came with a goodbye to my best friend. I still have a lot of heartache from that. There's a local cat lounge I've been going to every so often to try to fill that void, but it's not the same as having your own little monster excited to see you every day.

I do not have children and am currently single, I'm looking for the same because I'm dreaming of finding my person. I'll say 5'9" 190lbs here up front to prevent people from starting a conversation they don't want to have.

I've posted a few times before in the 30plus subreddit. I've made a couple longterm friendships this way and I really treasure them. With that said, I know that I'm not capable of multitasking these conversations very well, so after I get engaged in one conversation others won't get the best version of me even if they deserve better. I don't like neglecting people who take the time to reach out but often it does happen.