The first time I realized that the quiet and I were not on a first name basis was when I first visited Amanda's father. He lived on a mountain. You could hear the neighbor down the block sneeze at night. I found the quiet to be disconcerting.
Last night I turned everything off. No whirls. No hums. No buzzes. No beeps. However, there was still noise. My subconscious fired up and started churning through volumes of unprocessed thoughts to fill the void. This time the quiet did not bother me. It's good to stop, take time to decompress, and try to eavesdrop on an inner monologue that flies listen to your inner monologue for a while.
I need to apply this lesson to other facets of my life. Certain portions of my life need to be muted more regularly. People are not meant to live in a sequence of context switches in the form of instant messages, emails, phone calls, twitters, and text messages, only offset by the occasional injection of caffeine.
It's a wonder I ever finish a complete thought.