Britt's Blog

I concluded my noise fast on Friday with a 3.5 hour drive, alone, without the radio. At first I thought I’d just get past Madison, then I’ll turn on the radio, but when I got to that point, I thought I was doing fine, and I could probably make it to the Dells, and once I go that far, then I figured I could pretty much go all the way.

That was probably the most interesting part of the whole experiment. I think it finally achieved some of the calm and stillness that I was hoping to get at. So it would seem that quiet is most effective in large doses.

In the end, I’ve found:

Radio while brushing teeth: good.
Podcasts while walking and running: good.
Some amount of informational websurfing: good.
Constantly checking RSS feeds all day: bad.
Driving alone for three hours at night in silence: strangely, not all that bad.

It turns out to have been a strange week to start my noise fast. I’ve just been so stressed and busy and behind on everything that I haven’t been tempted to surf the web…

… much …

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Mornings are probably the hardest. I’m in the habit of lying in bed and listening to the clock radio for a while, so now that I wake up to the buzzer (ugh, how unpleasant), I’ve found it pretty much impossible to get up right away. I have to spend a little time convincing myself that my dreams were just dreams, and worrying about all the work I have to do for the day, and psyching myself up to get out from under the covers.

Monday morning, it pretty much sucked brushing my teeth without the radio and running without my iPod.

Tuesday morning felt a little better, for some reason, not as onerous, possibly because I didn’t have to run.

Both days I’ve pretty much been so crazed with emerging crises at work that I don’t think I’d have taken the time to surf the web even if it were “allowed.” I did miss being able to put on some music while I worked.

It’s also bumming me out that I can’t just turn on a podcast while walking to and from work. This has turned into a rather stressful time for me, unfortunately, as I find myself fretting about whatever I need to do as soon as I get to my destination, or thinking other gloomy thoughts.

Spending the Monday evening watching TV and knitting was niiiice, though. I maybe should have been grading, but I worked very hard Monday, and since I have to teach Tuesday and Thursday evenings, I rationalize that it’s really important for me to take Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings off. Sadly, tonight I’m off to teach class. There will be just a little time to unwind after class before bed, and then I await the buzzer in the morning, and another un-podcast-y run. At least it’s not going to rain like it did Monday!

I wonder which is the more precious commodity for me: time or energy. Some days it really does seem like there are not enough hours to do what I need to do. Other days it seems like I waste a lot of time surfing the web, fixing things that I have screwed up, or running around in a dither failing to accomplish anything. These are problems I attribute to a lack of energy, motivation, or focus, or something like that.

For one week I am going to cut out as much extraneous information out of my life as possible. I want to thin out my constant, self-imposed demands to focus on non-essential data.

I originally titled this post “The Radical Single-Tasking Experiment,” but it’s not so much a scientific experiment designed to test a crisply-stated hypothesis as a touchy-feely new-agey get-in-touch-with-your-inner-whatever sort of a thing, so I’m calling it a Noise Fast.

For a week, I’m ditching my iPod, turning off the radio, ignoring my RSS feeds, and not surfing the web except for work.

I am not swearing them off forever. For one thing, I don’t think that’s a sustainable choice. For another, I don’t think that these media are actually bad in general. I am going to turn them off for a week because I am curious about what I will do with the time and attention that I have been expending on them.

How dependent am I on the radio, web-surfing, my iPod, iTunes? Which of these will I miss the most? I’m hoping to identify the things I’m addicted to (unhealthily), the things that enrich my life (as noted by the deleterious effects of their absence), and the things I don’t miss at all (i.e. things I can easily cut out to get more time to do other things).

Will I feel more peaceful if I spend more time alone with my thoughts? Will I become more mindful in my everyday activities? Will I feel more relaxed if I remove some distractions that may be interfering with my work? Will I feel like I have more energy? Will I enjoy spending my time on things that I don’t currently seem to have enough time to do?

Or will I merely be bored, uninformed, and cranky?

Another interesting question is whether I’ll be able to do it for a whole week.

I hope to make this an intentional, mindful, reflective process, so I think that writing about it regularly is important. I am also hoping to boost my motivation by making myself accountable to my millions and millions half-dozen readers, so I will be blogging about my observations, frustrations and elations.

The fun starts Monday. Let me know if you have any tips, or whether you think it’s a cockamamie scheme that will only end in tears.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, “Take on Me” is the greatest music video of all time.

This reinterpretation of “Take on Me” with lyrics that describe the video therefore must be second greatest music video of all time.

(Pipe wrench fight)

Also, Family Guy gives awesome parody, as always.

(Do the kids these days even know what a music video is? Are there any videos on TV any more now that MTV does nothing but idiotic reality TV shows?)

Last weekend, I ran the (1st annual, perhaps) Bill Behling 2-Mile Fun Walk/Run.

I trained for it, sort of, which was faintly ludicrous, since it’s a two-mile run, which is nothin’, yet I nonetheless made no measurable improvement in training. But, hey, I ran hills and did intervals for a month.

I have little interest in competitive sports. This is not because I’m not a competitive person; quite the opposite. It’s because I am both competitive and extremely lame at any kind of a contest involving strength, endurance, or hand-eye coordination. So I am destined to lose, which sucks, on account of my being a competitive person and wanting to win, and all.

Well, anyway, my competitive side certainly responded to the sight of the back of the person who was ahead of me or the sound of someone coming up from behind me, and I ran really hard, and finished in 19 minutes 30 seconds, which is way better than my usual 11.5-minute mile.

I was pretty delighted, thinking that maybe the competition thing was good for me, getting me out of a rut, etc. Yet in the aftermath of the fun run, I’m right back to poking along at the same ol’ speed as always. Without the motivation to beat somebody, I can’t seem to put forth even a sliver more effort. Trying to beat my old time doesn’t trigger the magic, either—not immediate enough to rev up whatever caveman part of my brain wants very, very badly to beat that person ahead of me.

I’d kind of like to do a 5K. I had a reasonably good experience with the 2-mile race, and a 5K is the obvious next step, and I’ve been wanting to put on some more distance, and maybe having a race to train for will help a little to keep me motivated. I’m a little resistant to creating new not-contributing-to-getting-tenure sorts of commitments. However, I already am committed to running, and taking out a morning to go run at an event be only a minor complication on top of my already over-scheduled existence, so probably I ought go ahead with it.