Jeff's RSI Stuff

I cannot begin to speak highly enough about audiobooks. I read constantly, however I began to notice that holding a book was aggravating my RSI symptoms. At first, it seemed unrelated. I was sitting in a reasonable position, the book wasn't heavy, etc.

And still, my symptoms were always exacerbated when I read. Upon looking into this further, I found that there are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that I was in a static position. That is to say, I wasn't moving around. The second reason was because I was grasping the book. I find that grasping anything (no matter how heavy) tends to exacerbate my symptoms. Sometimes something as simple as a sheet of paper can cause a problem. Needless to say, an entire novel was not doing me any good.

Enter audio books, those books available on cassette, CD or even MP3 CDs. These books changed the way I do just about everything. Now, I can listen to a book just about anywhere, while I'm doing just about anything such as:

• in the car
• at the gym
• cooking
• hiking
• eating (when eating alone of course)

or just about anywhere else. I can walk around and do any chores I normally would. Exercise no longer seems to be boring because I have a good book to keep my mind occupied. I even changed diapers while listening to books on my iPod.

While these books can be fairly expensive to purchase(some unabridged titles can cost almost $100), many titles are available through your local library. In many cases you can even request books from other neighboring libraries to expand the pool of available literature. While I have not tried it, other companies offer audio books for download. One of them is Audible.

So stop by your local library and give audio books to try. Of course, if you're not careful, it's easy to become addicted. Currently I read at least four or five unabridged books per month and often times many more than that.