White Noise

I don't like silence.

You might be thinking, "Cool - me neither." But no, no, you're not understanding me. I abhor silence.

If John and I are driving across the state to visit our families and he's had a long day and wants to just chill out on his phone, I get upset. Because I want to TALK. Constantly. About anything. About nothing. It drives him crazy sometimes and I understand that he appreciates being able to relax so I'll play the alphabet game on my own while I drive. (You know the one - where you see a letter in a sign and say "A" - "Lansing" "B" - "Burger King").

When I was in high school, I won 2 superlative awards and was allowed to pick which one I wanted to represent me for all time. One was Class Clown and the other was Most Talkative. Not wanting to be known forever as the girl who couldn't shut up, I chose to represent my class as a clown.

If you read my report cards from grade school you will see that my teachers loved me. I was smart, I worked hard but I never stopped talking.

I once got detention for spelling words out-loud from the crowd during a spelling bee.

Sometimes, when I'm anxious about silence I run through the American Sign Language alphabet with my hands. Partially because it feels like talking and partially because I'm hoping someone will ask me what I'm doing so I can speak.

Now that you have a clearer picture in your head about how crazy I am about silence let me tell you why this is important - I work from home. I have no coworkers and very limited conversations with my colleagues. Sometimes, they even meet without me and have conversations that I could contribute to and with my vast talking abilities.

So I watch youtube videos while I work, and rewatch tv shows on my lunch break, and as soon as John gets home I resume never shutting up. At very high volumes because I haven't spoken outloud enough during the day.

And this thought has been eating at me lately. Like maybe I talk too much. Or maybe I have too many thoughts that I need to express and not enough outlets to do so. And then I remembered that I have a blog. So I can write here as though I'm having a conversation with a friend. Or maybe it's more like that sign language thing and I'm talking to myself. Either way, I think I'll try to use it more. But I'll expect less.

Yeah, that's the ticket.