Noise

Noise. It's a funny thing, when we wish for silence all we hear is the clutter around us. And if not the clutter around us, we hear something even more bothersome, our own thoughts. When we want to drown out the noise the silence that comes is almost deafening, at times unbearable. Is there any happy medium that exists in which the noise in our lives just becomes less than the loudness of our thoughts and more than the dull hum of the mundane?

When I woke up at 4am to the birds chirping in the trees, I got to thinking about the noise in my life. The racket drowned out what was most important, me. Somewhere in between the summer of weddings, finishing school in the fall, and the birds singing this morning, it was Spring again. And I almost failed to notice.

Had the noise in my life been that loud? Or was I too distracted to tune it out?

Spring is a time for rebirth and new beginnings but lately I've been feeling like I'm just back where I started, no growth, no progress, just the same old Tash. As much as I loved the clamor in my life this past year, things have got to change because I don't want to be here, in this exact same place, next year. Slowly, one by one as any fine tuning job would, I've been eliminating the superfluous minutiae from all around me.

If you haven't already noticed, one of those aspects is Facebook. I'm not going to explain why I deleted it because well, it just doesn't concern you. But although Facebook is an excellent tool for social networking and "staying in touch," I really cannot rationalize with talking to people through comments on a regular basis and not physically spending time with them altogether. I'm not that kind of friend.

I can't promise that I'll never come back to Facebook, but in the foreseeable future it's just not for me.

The noise that is the hardest to drown out, mute, or even lower altogether is the constancy and loudness of my heart, of what it wants, needs and can't have. When I write I let go and it's the only instance in my life where my head is overruled by my stupid heart and I write what I feel, without thinking, without second guessing myself, without worry. It's the weirdest thing because I have difficulty reading my words. When I've written a poem, a journal entry, or even blog entry, I can't go back and read it for a week or a month. For some reason I feel like what I'm trying to say gets lost in translation, and although the beauty is in the attempt...I'm still usually unsatisfied. And I know that is a huge problem that I need to face and come to terms with because I need to be able to recognize myself in words, not just in thoughts. And that's where finding my voice comes into play. If I want others to be able to hear me, I have to first hear myself. And I just can't do that with all the noise that used to drown me out.

For where I'm at in my life right now I just want to...need to find my voice again, in life and especially in writing. Those of you who don't really know me will probably assume that I'm suffering from some dark and dramatic inner turmoil, but it's actually just the opposite. I feel like I can breathe again. And it's not that I can't balance the noise in my life, I don't think there's any reasonable balance for that. It's just that I want to clearly hear the music that's important to me as well as the static in between.

In the meantime, I will admit that Facebook withdrawal is keeping me highly entertained because parts of the day go by and I still find myself thinking in status-updates. For example, today went a little something like this...


Natasha just decided what mixtape to run to for the Shamrock Shuffle.
Natasha (in the past three days) has watched seasons 4, 5 and 6 of Sex and the City.
Natasha is trying to be less connected and isn't sure why she has an iPhone, FML.
Natasha still needs to renew her U.S. Passport or she can say adios to the ticket to Mexico.
Natasha cannot wait for the season premiere of My Boys...c'mon, c'mon.
Natasha has a stack of foreign (mostly Korean and Italian) films waiting for her when she gets home.
Natasha should really get back to work!