noise | si·lence

/noiz/ noun Sound, especially when loud, unpleasant, or unwanted; also, the constant hum of input and distraction that fills modern life; paradoxically, can also mean the essential chaos of being alive, the necessary disruption that signals something real is happening

/ˈsīləns/ noun The complete absence of sound; a state of stillness or quiet; also, the deliberate withholding of words or action, which can signal either peace and presence or avoidance and fear, depending on what it's protecting or preventing

I write every day, it's just been a while since I have written here.

Every morning a set of cards inspires the words that start my day. It's a modified free journaling exercise, and some mornings are filled with great insight while others become more lackluster. But this morning, something fascinating hit: "You only realize something is gone when you feel it again." The context of the something is unimportant here, but it was a bit of an intriguing insight. When we create intentional space, we know things are missing, because we created the space. But when things just drift away, we sometimes forget they were once there because we have focused our energy and attention elsewhere.

I have made an intentional practice of starting and ending my day with journaling this year. It wasn't a New Year’s resolution, it was simply a choice I made. One that I have kept well into the ending slope of this year, as we see the days shorter and the natural progression into seasonal darkness. The days are colder, the leaves are turning beautiful colors and falling, and the commercial signs of the impending holiday season are everywhere.

Perhaps a bit metaphorical.

As I reflect on the path traveled, the duality of noise and silence has become an important theme. Not all noise is bad. Not all silence is good. That's the power of finding interesting dualities, which is what I have spent the majority of the summer doing. Finding. Exploring. Researching. Refining. Rinse and Repeat. It started with Lessen | Lesson which led to a delightful, insightful, and occasionally tear-inducing journey. And somewhere in that journey, I realized we've been thinking about noise and silence all wrong.

We've been sold this idea that noise is the enemy. That if we could just turn everything off, unplug, escape the constant barrage of input, we'd finally find peace. Get our shit together. Become the centered, mindful version of ourselves we keep promising we'll be. Sometimes that's accurate. The doomscrolling at midnight. The manufactured crisis of every text message. The anxiety that sounds a lot like trying to meet everyone else's expectations while ignoring your own. That noise? Yeah, that can go.

But some noise is just life being messy and human and real. There's my twelve-year-old explaining Fortnite strategies with the seriousness of a military briefing, and I have no idea what half the words mean but I know it matters to him. There's the kitchen chaos when someone's telling a story and everyone keeps interrupting because they remember it differently. There's the noisy, uncomfortable conversation that finally says what everyone's been thinking but nobody wanted to touch. There's the creative process that refuses to be quiet or linear or make sense to anyone watching. Some noise deserves to stay loud.

And then there's silence. God, we've romanticized the hell out of silence. Meditation apps. Noise-canceling everything. Retreats where nobody talks for days. Like if we could just get quiet enough, we'd finally hear the answer. Sometimes we do. Sometimes silence is exactly what we need. But sometimes silence is just cowardice with better marketing. It's the thing you don't say because saying it might cost you something. It's the relationship slowly bleeding out while you tell yourself you're being respectful of boundaries. It's the dream you stopped mentioning because people gave you that look. It's the meeting where everyone nods along with a bad idea because speaking up feels too risky. Not all silence is peaceful. Some of it is just stuck.

I've spent months now staring at these dualities, trying to figure out what's actually true versus what sounds good. And here's what I keep coming back to. It's not about choosing noise or silence. It's about knowing which noise you need to hear and which silence you're using to avoid something. Your inner critic is noisy as hell. So is your intuition. They don't sound the same once you pay attention. The silence after you've said something true is different than the silence of swallowing what needs to be said. One feels clean. The other festers.

This space has been quiet, but not because I needed it to be. My time and attention were just focused elsewhere. On the noise of figuring something out without packaging it for an audience first. The noise of ideas crashing into each other without worrying about whether they made sense to anyone else yet. The noise of writing every single day in a voice that breaks every rule I was taught about professional writing. And yeah, the silence too. Not the Instagram-worthy kind. The regular kind where you stop performing and let things develop without narrating them. Where you sit with ideas long enough to know if they're actually useful or just clever.

The book is like baking. It's only perfect when executed with precision, and I'm not in a rush. I want it to be the right thing at the right time. My right thing at my right time. Some days it feels like the most important thing I've ever worked on. Other days it feels like I'm just stating the obvious in slightly different ways. That's probably how most things worth doing feel.

What I've found in the process feels real though. These moments where we think we don't have a choice but we actually do. These ordinary crossroads that determine whether we're expanding or contracting, opening or defending, growing or just going through the motions. Lessen | Lesson was the first one. The rest followed once I started looking. Now I see them everywhere. In every conversation. Every conflict. Every ordinary moment that's anything but. Each one a different crossroads, another choice we make without realizing we're making it.

Strategy trumps luck and grit conquers all. That's been my motto for the past two years, and it's proving true in ways I didn't expect. Not in the hustle culture way where you just grind harder. In the way where you show up consistently for the work that matters, even when nobody's watching. Especially when nobody's watching. The noise of daily practice. The silence of letting things become what they need to become.

This space has been quiet while I've been making other noise. But noise and silence aren't opposites. They're just different frequencies of the same commitment. To growth. To honesty. To figuring out what's actually true versus what just sounds good.

October 23, 2025