Drunk Noise

So, work is overwhelming. And life is overwhelming.

And the noise in your head says you better work harder and longer so you don’t miss anything. 

I send a weekly newsletter about writing, creativity, and making space between who we are and who we tell ourselves we are. This week was about the noise under the surface that continues no matter what; even when our actions are powerful. The noise will still want us to feel weak because we had a moment of fear. The noise is a jerk.

And then that triggers different voices that say, since you’re worried about missing something, you will definitely miss something, and that something will be very important. And that will ruin everything.

And that starts a third voice yelling, everything needs to be perfect because if everything is perfect, then nothing needs anything.  Because otherwise everything will fall to nothing, and you never really had anything in the first place. 

There are behavioral techniques to combat this. We can break tasks into smaller chunks and dismantle this entire mechanism; we can quiet that noise and corral all the voices into their bunk beds. It beats back the anxiety, tames the fear. It’s supposed to fix everything. It wrestles the stuff down to manageable pieces. It keeps us productive. It soothes our self-esteem. It makes the world a less scary place. 

But still. Actively, tangibly fighting the mental naysayers with my lists, and affirmations, and bullet points, I find a little judgment sneaking past the velvet ropes of my mind. “Why were you so scared in the first place?” I was supposed to be fearless. It starts to dismantle the mechanism dismantling the mechanism.  

This is the noise, doing a little noise double tap; you zig, it zags. It is working with perfectionism, who is already the guy who shows up to dinner without an invitation. It whispers. It implies weakness simply by experiencing fear. Fear is a basic, physiological aspect of being alive; it is a tool to keep you from being smooshed by a bus. It is not, in and of itself, good or bad, but even during the act of confronting and conquering what I fear, the noise casually drops that I still failed by letting it past the bouncers. And so, my nervousness is amplified and solidified.

All of this doubt has to be muscled through; all this has to be held back.  And it steals energy, and pride, and perspective; it makes my efforts heavier, and so while I machete through the jungle, just to get through the day, I procrastinate; I wonder where my creative mojo is. If I don’t see that it’s noise, muttering from the dark corners of my mind, sucking my life force like a vampire with a crazy straw, I hear “I'm not good enough" and think it’s me. Because the noise is counting on the fact that I won’t look, or I won’t remember, or I won’t wake up. It’s hoping I’m so tired or hypnotized by its hum that I don’t realize there’s no such thing as fearlessness. There is only walking through the scary and celebrating on the other side.

This is the energetic layer, the layer of the noise you feel. The noise that is your drunk friend you have to drag home after a long night, slowing you down with their dead weight and pulling every sticky lollipop from the sidewalk into your car along with them. It’s easy to get so focused on the logistics of folding them into the back seat that you forget you could dump them into an Uber and block their number, you know?

Write above the noise, the noise that yells and the noise that whispers. And keep an eye on that double tap.