Thursday, February 26, 2009

Quiet



When this house was filled with the choas of four kids, I longed for just a few hours of uninterupted time. I would relish the one and only day of the year when Brian would take the kids out of town Christmas shopping, I would have this entire house to myself. The possiblities of what I would do for those few brief hours kept me excited for weeks.


I've never done 'Quiet' very well or very often. Noise & activity & multi-tasking have been engrained in me for so long, that there simply hasn't been room for Quiet. Even as the house emptied and I've found myself with more hours of Potential Quiet than I ever expected possible, I still fill my space and head with activity and noise in abundance. And when all else fails, I create events to keep it at bay.

I'm working at learning to come to terms with 'Quiet'. I've turned off the TV, the radio, my books - for entire hours at a time. I an actually coming to like it. I've even done something that I have always considered absolutely IMPOSSIBLE. I have been driving the car with no sound. Amazing! I did't even know that it would work with the radio Off.

BUT ... Solitude is different than Quiet. I am accepting Quiet because I know that Brian is out there working in the shop & will be in at any moment to entertain me with stories of his day. I know that the Quiet is a short and passing thing, so I can enjoy it for a few moments, knowing that it won't have to last long. I have a little drink of it & then say 'That's enough for now.'

For the past few days, he's been away & it's just been Abby and Me. You'd think, that I would be delighted & excited to have a few days of uninterupted time to play and create all day AND night - not having to cook or dung off the table for dinner. You'd think that I'd get wonderful things accomplished. It's not happening. I kind of walk around in circles, wondering what I should do, where I should start, what I could accomplish. Turns out, it's Too Quiet. And too Solitary. It's not helping my creative process one little bit.

Abby's just chillin'. She's pretty happy in her quiet little Dog World. Me ... l'll be real glad when Brian gets home tomorrow and I can go back to wondering how I can to squeeze just a Little Bit of Quiet into the day.

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