Jumping Head First into Audible

I might enjoy it.

At 40, my eyes are too old and too tired to flip through hundreds of pages like I used to. I am already an avid podcast listener. Hopefully, this will work, and I can enjoy novels again.

When I was a kid, I loved reading novels. I would prefer to play video games or watch movies and also read. However, thanks to parental abandonment and abusive ‘replacement’ guardian parents who raised me, I had no access to anything.

So, books it was. Sherlock Holmes. Moby Dick. The Lost World. Ah! One of my favorites. Classic Literature stuff. I would go for the bigger books. That way, I can get lost in that world.

And, just like my movie watching habit, I would read these books again and again.

So, in a way, my terrible childhood and upbringing helped me improve my English. So, you know, it’s not that bad, I guess.

Once I was older, I could buy books myself. I bought a lot of expensive, imported comic books. I would buy novels from bookstores, Kindle, or just read them online. Just read…read…. read. Harry Potter, how many times I have read and re-read that. Game of Thrones, yes! The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, one of my favorites. Another book that I have read many times.

All of them, door stoppers. Massive books.

Then, the pandemic struck. I found myself stuck, alone, away from family during the quarantine. Work stopped because my company was forced to shut down around the same time. Then, wife left me, and took the kids and the motivation to live itself. That’s not a hyperbole.

As if that’s not enough, my parents abandoned me as they blamed me for not being to keep my marriage.

Dominoes keep falling man. That’s just how it is.

It’s sad. As sad as it gets.

I say all this, because it took its toll on my mind. I could barely focus on work. For almost 18 months, I quit working in developer roles, only earning a livelihood on tutoring. Lost all interest in everything. The last 6 months, as I come to terms to my failed marriage, and accepting my fate that I will alone for the rest of my life, I have been putting back the pieces of my life together.

At least, those pieces that can be put back.

One of those pieces, is, reading novels. I miss it. I would read hundreds of pages in a matter of days. I love reading.

But, my mind is completely destroyed. It cannot tolerate reading. I tried and tried. It won’t budge. I tried, real paper novels. Bought several of them. I tried Kindle. No. My mind simply cannot read.

Yet, it asks for knowledge. It asks words to consume. I noticed; it is okay with ‘audio’. I have been listening to podcasts. A lot. Then, I realised. Okay, I can still ‘consume’ novels, perhaps, if they are in the shape of an audio. Also, a human voice might give me a semblance of ‘companionship’.

So, here we go. Paper books. Failed. Kindle books. Failed. Audio books? I will report after some time. I pray to god, that, it works out. Please.

I need this to work.

I work as a full-time freelance coding tutor. Hire me at UpWork or Fiverr or Stack Overflow. My personal website is here. Find more of my art at Behance and Unsplash and ArtStation. Also, I have a Podcast about everyday life. And, a 2nd Podcast, where I talk about freelancing. And, I have one more podcast, where, I talk about movies.