I remember way back in the ’90s, meeting with a great nutritionist who was also a great therapist. At the time I listened to lots of Audible.com books and shows. She advised me at the time to reduce that input. “You like to mull things over,” she said. [1]
When podcasts came along, I gorged myself and have done for many years. I listened to them doing the dishes, working outside, walking, puttering around the house, etc. The margins of my day needed to be filled with something, put to use, and listening to podcasts helped me feel I was doing something productive with that otherwise unused time.
However, I have more than once over the past years heard a whisper underneath all the noise: Get rid of them. Go quiet.
This usually led to me pruning my feeds, reducing the number of podcasts in my queue, and so on. But, like stubborn belly fat, the episodes continued to accumulate over time and never went away.
But I heard that whisper more frequently of late. I decided my word of the year would be SPACE: more spaciousness in my schedule and more spaciousness in my head. So I decided to take more drastic action on my aural inputs.
In Castro, I deleted all the podcasts in my “later” queue and reduced the number of active podcasts in my current queue to about 25. I’m in no hurry to work through them.
I unsubscribed from many podcasts; I still keep a few that I really like because I do enjoy listening to something while I wash the dishes or vacuum. I select not just what I listen to, but when and where I listen. [2]
If I really want to hear something, it’s easy to find that specific episode and download it. And Castro makes it easy for me to upload audio files and listen to them easily.
I am finding myself in the quiet a little more, and I don’t miss the chatter. I have also not been plagued with the FOMO, a devil imp if ever there was one.
[1] The irony of my overconsuming junk food for the body and junk food for the mind is not lost on me.
[2] As I also do to control my eating.
