In the early days of STACKED, I was a big audiobook listener. I had an hour-long commute each way between home and work, and I could sail through audiobooks pretty quickly. An hour each way is about a disc each way, meaning I could get through a decent-length audiobook in a little over a work week. I worked my way through a number of adult fiction titles, some award-winning YA titles (I’d found that it was often easier to get those titles on audiobook rather than wait on the holds list for print), and nonfiction. And pretty quickly, I discovered that nonfiction on audiobook really worked for me.

But then I got a new job at a new library that was in my town. My commute went from an hour each way to a mere five minutes total. I tried audiobooks but they didn’t work for me. There wasn’t enough time to sink into them, and more, the job took a lot out of me, and I cherished the silence I got in that short commute.

Keep in mind, too, that this was in the days before digital audiobooks were ubiquitous. To listen to an audiobook meant getting a CD set or hoping you could score a Play Away. There wasn’t a convenient way to listen to audiobooks that weren’t in the car at this point, so listening during free time or during tasks at home meant a lot of work to get CDs to a device.

While I like technology, I much prefer laziness when it comes to things like that.

I left that job and worked from home for about a year before getting a job with a thirty minute commute each way. But, having gotten out of the habit of listening to audiobooks, I couldn’t motivate myself to do it.

But now, eight or so years later, working entirely from home and having done so now for four years, I have become obsessed with audiobooks again.

It began, though, with podcasts.

Gretchen Rubin, whose habit-forming book Better Than Before did not resonate particularly well for me, has a podcast with her sister Elizabeth I really enjoy. And it was there I figured out exactly why it is audiobooks are working for me again: the concept of the blank slate. It is with a hard reset or change in your life where you’re most likely to make change.

That hard reset, it turns out, was moving.

When I had to clean and pack the home we’d lived in for eight years, I started using Audible to buy an audiobook every month — this was a job perk, and I decided to take advantage of it. As it turns out, listening to an engaging audiobook while you’re scrubbing baseboards or emptying cupboards makes the time and tasks much more enjoyable. Being able to tote those audiobooks digitally in my literal back pocket made it easy to move room-to-room without cords.

I packed and cleaned and listened to audiobook after audiobook. I moved those items from our home in one state, across the border to another, and listened to an audiobook in the car as I drove. An hour each way, on top of the hours of packing and cleaning, meant blowing through book after book.

And then, the habit continued.

I’m not moving now. Most of my stuff has been unpacked. But I’m still picking up audiobooks and listening, adding additional credits to my account each month and splurging on daily deals for titles which sound interesting and ring in at just a couple of bucks.

I listen every day when I am getting ready in the morning. Twenty minutes here and there adds up. Pair those minutes up with spending ten or twenty minutes at the beginning and/or at the end of the day laying in bed and listening, and eventually, it’s close to an hour of listening each day. For audiobooks ringing in at 10 or 15 hours, it only takes a couple of weeks of listening here and there to finish a book. Particularly good audiobooks are motivation to get errands done out of the house, too: I can listen to forty minutes of audiobook if I choose to go to one of the bigger grocery stores in the next town. And each week, when I make the trek to teach yoga an hour away, I can blow through two more hours of listening.

Those little pockets of time add up. But more than add up numerically, they’ve added such a nice change of pace to my day and created a companion to the quiet that I otherwise find myself in. I’m a quiet person and keep a quiet home, but going all day without much noise or companionship because of my work setup can get overwhelming. Audiobooks give a sense of not only company, but it’s company that I get to control. When I need the silence to think, I can have it. When I need a story to let my mind wander, I can have it.

This blank slate of moving — this reset on my life — has given me the opportunity to fall back in love with audiobooks.

I’m excited to dig into the collection of audiobooks available at my new library, as Libby is now an option for borrowing and downloading easily.  I’ve relied on Audible for the time being because I’ve got enough books available to me there that one credit a month has been sufficient — though I cannot recommend digging into Janssen’s guide to Audible for anyone curious about it or curious how to save money using it (those daily deals are GOOD).

I can’t wait for the weather to finally turn and I can resume a daily habit of walking outside. I can only imagine how many more audiobooks I’ll be enjoying while creating new paths and adventures in this new place.