Audio Mania!

It is no lie when I tell you that for most of my life I was unable to focus on listening to an audio book for longer than a minute. The energy it required to have me complete two tasks at once (driving and listening) was too much for me. I love reading so much, and once I started driving, I thought it would be a fantastic way to continue "reading" when I couldn't physically hold the book. I tried and tried. Book after book was rented from the public library, only to be returned a week later. I would hand over my failure while the media clerk sifted through to make sure I didn't hold on to one of the CD's. She didn't need to do that. They were all there. I never made it past CD #1. I was pretty frustrated with myself that I couldn't remember what I had just read, and drifted off into Never, Never Land every time a narrator's voice would blare out over the speakers. I gave up trying after a while and thought it best to listen to music in the car. Short attention span was how I justified it.

Years passed by with maybe a check out or two a year. I never truly gave up. I always thought the next year would change my brain. Make me somehow competent enough to listen and remember. Every year I repeated the same sequence of events. Check out audio book. Return a week later. Wait for clerk to count CD's. Wash, rinse, repeat. Again, I cursed the short attention span.

On a spree of reading a series of self-help books, I read in one of them that you could make anything happen that you truly set your mind to. Your determination and fortitude could generate the results you desired. With that in mind, I purchased an audio book payment plan, and loaded my phone up with a few titles. I also checked out an audio book from the library. I trained myself to listen every single day, and to repeat the events as they happened, as an exercise in active listening. 1 hour turned into two, into three, and soon all I was doing was listening to audio books. In lines, in the car, during my lunch break, walking through the store. I bought an auxiliary cable for my car, so I could listen non-stop whenever I wanted.  Pretty soon, I was adding a book a week. I did it! I accomplished the very goal I thought to be impossible. I used to think that self-help stuff was a bunch of horse shit, but it worked!

So here I am, preaching to all my fellow book readers who have short attention spans. It can be done. You say audio books aren't for you? Well, I will give you a list of some of the best ones to add right now. This, from the biggest critic. If it is even slightly boring-it's out! Now I don't loathe my commute far to work, or driving everywhere taking my kids to their practices, and myself to teach Spinning and Pilates classes. Happy Valentine's Day!

Accidents of Marriage by Randy Susan Meyers



The Martian by Andy Weir



The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd



Any you could add to the list?