For those of you that are regular readers of my blog (please let there be at least one!), I think you might suspect what area of my life this [post is going to touch on, based on its title ... and you'd be right, but I'm also hoping to broaden my horizons on this one ever so slightly.
I'm one of those people that's very comfortable with silence; a silence within my group of friends or family doesn't ever feel forced, because we're all comfortable with each other, and that's the beauty of silence, I think. It can provide that level of closeness that feeling obligated to talk just doesn't give.
What I've just said, however, doesn't mean I can imagine living completely without noise. Being dyspraxic, I've always been very sensitive to background noise. I was often easily distracted as a child by everything that was going on around me. In time, I trained myself to focus on an individual task, but it's still difficult, even to this day! If I'm working on something important, I'll often have to walk away somewhere quieter to do it, else I end up ear-wigging on someone else's conversation!
As a fledgling writer, I've been experimenting with different ways of getting the most out of my brain. I've sat at my desk, on the sofa, on the floor and even on the bus - all have positives, I'll grant you, but I've realised that I get the most out of my writing time when I'm surrounded by silence.
Please don't misunderstand me - I love talking to people, listening in to conversations (oh come on, who doesn't do that sometimes?) and I have a real passion for music. If I'm writing fiction, and I'm struggling with a particular concept or emotion, I'll often try to find a piece of music that helps evoke those thoughts or feelings - and I think it helps me enhance my writing skills. However, on the whole, when I have a goal in mind, or a particular time limit, the radio goes off and I develop tunnel vision.
The one exception to the last paragraph is this blog; for some reason, I also enjoy writing it more if I'm listening to music. I'm a mass of contradictions, aren't I?
This is on my mind at the moment as we're preparing for the first portion of our BSL exam in a couple of weeks, and one of our teacher's firmest instructions is to make sure that we "switch our voices off" during the five or six minutes of the test. Bizarrely, that's not something I seem to be having trouble with, despite my ... well-known ... love of talking. I honestly thought that I would have more of an issue with it than I have done so far - I'm able to internalise my monologue while I'm signing.
The only problem I have is feeling frustrated - entirely with myself - when I know what I want to say, but don't know how to say it. Occasionally, I've found it difficult not to break and talk instead, but I realise that wouldn't do me any good if I want to learn, and it certainly wouldn't do my deaf teacher any good. I have to wonder if this is how deaf people sometimes feel around hearing people - they have a lot they want to say, but how can they express themselves?
It's that thought that forces me to get over myself and just keep trying.
PS. In case you're wondering, this blog was brought to you with the background sounds of Florence & the Machine's debut album, Lungs. It's blooming good. Buy it. Does this count as an advert? Sod it, I'm not the BBC.
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