driving with audiobooks

[marcicat]

My least favorite part of the return to office is the driving, because I'd really prefer to be using those four hours per week to do other things (like not driving, lol). But listening to audiobooks in the car has definitely made the experience better, sometimes in unexpected ways.

As in, I used to spend a LOT of the drive to and from work thinking about work! But now I'm spending the drive thinking about BOOK, which is clearly 10,000x better. It's like as soon as I get in the car at the end of the day, work is OVER and my brain is totally in storytime mode. It feels much less like I need to Get Home for the workday to be over, which makes it much easier to sit in traffic and not get super frustrated and cranky.

ALSO it means that yesterday I arrived at work and some people were a little stressed about various aspects of the day, and meanwhile I was thinking 'THIS MAN HAS 43 HOURS LEFT TO LIVE AND IS TRACKING THE POTENTIAL LIFE SAVING CURE THROUGH A FROZEN LANDSCAPE.' It really put the rest of the day into perspective, is what I'm saying.

Comments

[mecurtin]

Do you listen to audiobooks at normal speed, or do you speed them up? I never thought of such a thing, but apparently it's quite common

[marcicat]

I've heard that too! I tried listening to an audiobook at a slightly increased speed, but didn't love it. It felt like the storytelling cadence got thrown off, I guess? Usually the point of audiobooks for me is to pass time (driving, crocheting), so there's no reason for me to hurry it along.