How Do You Listen to Music While You Work? #PNIWritingChallenge Day 27

If you're a reader of this blog - and I certainly hope that you are - you'll notice that there is a big jump from day twenty-three to day twenty-seven. Several days. Just missing.

Allow me to explain.

I've been suffering from a monster head cold - one that has my ears infected and my sinuses so plugged that it's been a major event just to eat. When you can only breathe through an open mouth, you have to plan accordingly. I have been rather fuzzy this past week. I've had so much medication in my system - decongestants, pain relievers and antibiotics - and my ability to concentrate has taken a short leave of absence. I'm not all the way back to normal yet - I do so miss my ability to multi-task without much thought - but I feel myself slowly returning.

While I'm not going to try to make up for the topics I've missed - I'm way behind on my editing projects to try and catch up - I am jumping back in this afternoon in the hopes that I can focus on today's topic.

"How do you listen to music while you work?"

The easy - and honest - answer is I don't.

I listen to music a lot. I love music. I love music more than I love most things - but not while I'm working. You see, I love it so much that I can't concentrate on much of anything else while it's playing.

I've tried to listen to instrumental stuff while working. I love piano and classical. I thought that if there were no words to sing to, I could have it on in the background and not be distracted by it. No dice. I listen to music every single day ... but not while I'm trying to be creative. It's hard to type and write dialogue while you're moving around in your seat and singing song lyrics. I've found that, for me, things tend to get muddled up that way.

The question, though, was HOW do you listen to music? I have a bunch of CD's. Lots and lots of them. I also love Spotify. I have many saved playlists - even a couple that go with my novels. I was making another one today. I didn't plan to. I set out to write this post, then I got distracted because I was going to write about music. I then started listening to music and couldn't write. See?

When I think about it, it's kind of amazing that this post got written at all ...