rediscovering silence

I'm taking another break from the Author Blog Challenge today to talk about something I rediscovered last night...silence. Silence, you ask? Why yes. Seems simple. But in my world, I'm a mom, a wife, work a full-time job, and most of it is punctuated with music. So silence isn't something I get a whole lot. In fact, I think I lost touch with it almost four years ago when my little monkey was born. There is constantly someone or something yapping in my ear.

As of lately I've been dealing with a couple of difficult people in my life. Like soul-sucking difficult. Like they can easily drain the souls right out of an entire room. Someone totally unaware could be just sitting there and they'd walk in and whoosh there goes the soul. It's been going on for a while, and up until recently I'd been pretty good at dealing with it. Maybe it's gotten worse. Or maybe my tolerance level decreases as my age increases. I don't know.

So when I walked in from work with two cases of free beer (an unexpected, fantastic perk) and my mother-in-law was in the kitchen cooking shrimp fajitas (try and top that story on a Monday, I dare you) and my husband and daughter were out back playing, I decided some down time was in order.

In my comfy pants and a t-shirt, I collapsed onto my bed and lay there, still, under a ceiling fan set to fast speed. So the only sound I heard was the soft hum of the fan. And I realized the almost complete lack of sound was totally foreign. And calming. And soothing. And something my life sorely lacked.

Sure, I sit/lay in silence during yoga class once a week. But my yoga mat isn't nearly as comfortable as my bed. And even that's a lie. I'm too cheap to buy a yoga mat, so it's the gym's. Doesn't change the fact that it's not comfortable. And being in a dark room with other people also sitting in silence and chanty music seems to succeed in only making my brain run on super-speed. Don't get me wrong. I love yoga. But asking my brain to take a vacation is like asking my mom to successfully look something up on the internet. Ain't gonna happen. (Love you mom.)

My brain actually did quiet down on the bed...enough to allow for some productive thinking. Even my toes and feet got in on the party and started to get all tingly. It was lovely. Not going to lie.

So Silence. Been a while. Nice to get reacquainted. You and I need to spend more quality time together. I'd love for a couple of days, but realize this is a big request. Maybe just a few minutes here and there. I had a therapist once tell me the best thing I could do was sit for five minutes every day and do nothing. Maybe he was on to something. Perhaps I should have gone more than twice.

My advice? If you're stressing, or waiting for a breakthrough, just take five. Let me know how it goes.