A few years ago, I was interviewed for a podcast by a presenter who clearly wasn’t much of a listener himself. “How can you listen to so many podcasts?” he asked at the beginning of the interview and I explained I listened to them while doing work around the house, while walking around town and really, at just about every moment I didn’t need my brain for something else.<\/p>\n\n\n
Podcasts are great. I have always liked radio and podcasts are essentially radio on demand. There are so many good quality ones on so many interesting topics and when I have run out of podcasts to listen to, there are always audiobooks to complement them.<\/p>\n\n\n
Dimitra’s death last year significantly reduced the amount of social interaction in my life so I ended up listening to even more podcasts. I had a bluetooth earpiece in my ear for most of the day so that I could press play whenever I went to the bathroom, checked the laundry or got myself some fresh coffee from the kitchen.<\/p>\n\n\n
Listening to podcasts had the added benefit that most mundane tasks became fun and interesting. It was great.<\/p>\n\n\n
Except that with all this listening, I didn’t give my brain much time to actually think. About work. About life. About trivial things. About big things.<\/p>\n\n\n
It would be too far-fetched to say that podcasts were an escape mechanism \u2500 after all, I had been listening to them a lot before Dimitra’s death \u2500 but all this listening didn’t give me the time and space to digest the increasingly complex feelings I had. And I had been evading those feelings.<\/p>\n\n\n
Last month, as I was travelling, I took a break from listening to podcasts. I walked through foreign places absorbing the sounds of the city and found myself catching bits of other people’s conversations on public transport. It was great.<\/p>\n\n\n
I also found myself listening to my own thoughts. I had forgotten that much as I like to digest information, I also like to think. I found myself thinking a lot more. And I had missed that.<\/p>\n\n\n
I now listen to podcasts occasionally, when there is something I really want to listen to. They’re still great and my preferred podcast app \u2500 ironically named Podcast Addict<\/em> \u2500 is still there within hand reach. But being on my own, with just me and my brain, is great too. And even more important.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few years ago, I was interviewed for a podcast by a presenter who clearly wasn’t much of a listener himself. “How can you listen to so many podcasts?” he asked at the beginning of the interview and I explained I listened to them while doing work around the house, while walking around town and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}