When Rosann Filiponne pops her headphones in to listen to an audiobook while she walks along the beach near her home in Mornington, she hopes she won’t get distracted. “I try listening to the story but I’m distracted by all the dogs, I have to stop and pat them all!”
The 63-year-old retired primary school teacher was an avid reader growing up and wants to read more now, but struggles to concentrate. A bad neck means she now also struggles to keep her head down in a book for very long. So she has turned to audiobooks. “[But] I start looking at the leaves blowing off the trees and my mind starts focusing on the tree or I start watching a bird.” Listening in bed isn’t any better: “I nod off and three chapters have gone by.”
