The day the music died

I love music. Love. It has always made bad times good and great times better. I like just about everything about music. All different genres...making it, listening to it...it is all good. I have also always used music to motivate myself...I work harder when my favorite tunes are on. My workouts were only as good as my playlist. But then I started training for a marathon. Music was great for a while....but as the mileage climbed higher and the runs got longer, no playlist could keep me going the whole time.

I switched to just running in silence. There was something beautiful about this. Just me and my thoughts in the early morning before the craziness of the day. I was completely alone for a few hours every morning. I loved hitting the dead, empty streets, watching the sun come up, and listening to my breathing and shoes hit the pavement. It was my therapy. Then the mileage went even higher.

I wanted a distraction. It hit me that my dad is always carrying on about the book he is currently listening to. Listening. Brilliant! I used to love to read! College sort of killed that love...all those hours of forced reading changed reading from a pass time to a chore. I asked my dad to load me up with his most recent read. It was Hunger Games. It took about two weeks for me to finish it. Loved it. Even more than the book itself, I loved that I was "reading" again. It was so fun to get lost in a book every morning.

My dad has a rule that he listens to non fiction between every fictional book. I decided why not? My next book was a WWII story about Louis Zamperini. It was amazing. And again, I loved that books were back in my life. I was learning every morning as I ran. I have fallen in love with audio books. I don't have time to sit down and read every single day. Well, I guess it is more than I am not willing to make the time...but now I don't need to.  I now listen to books while cleaning, relaxing, or any other time I have a minute to myself.

Now don't get me wrong. I love my tunes. I still jam regularly. But I am officially converted to audio books for running, driving, and such. I might never go back!