My Life in Stitches: Multitasking

I’m not a fan of audiobooks. I’m completely in love with paper books, the feel of the pages between my fingers. I always find it amusing when I read experts predicting that paper books will soon be a thing of the past. If given the choice, I’ll choose paper over audiobooks every time. I plan to singlehandedly keep print books in business.

Not that I’ve had listen to a bunch of audiobooks. As a matter of fact, I’ve only listened to one, Diary of a Wimpy Kid. My children and I were on our way to Corolla, NC for Thanksgiving. I needed something to keep me alert on the long drive. One of my sons had the book on his iPod and so I gave it a shot. It turned out to be ok, but it wasn’t an experience I wanted to repeat—the long car drive or the audiobook. But I had a change a heart brought on something totally unrelated to books or my paper preference: multitasking.

As much as I don’t like audiobooks, I love multitasking. It drives me crazy to only do one thing at a time. If I’m writing, I have to have music going. If I’m talking on the phone, I’m normally sweeping or folding laundry. But, when I’m knitting, that’s all I can do. I can watch TV but I’m bound to make mistakes. Of course I can listen to music, but that’s something I do all the time. Knitting, although I love it, requires single-tasking or lots of tinking (removing stitches by reverse knitting).

So when a woman in a knitting group I’m a part of mentioned that she listens to audiobooks while she knitting, a light bulb came on. Audiobooks would allow me to do multitask and combine two of favorite things: books and knitting. Also, it allows me to take advantage of the audiobook service my library offers. (And as a public service announcement: Please take advantage of your library services. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.)

So right now I’m listening to In Search of Eden by Linda Nichols. So far so good. And I’m making progress on the baby blanket. And for the sake of multitasking, I’ll deal with not holding a paper book.