cubed in silence

Since starting my job about a week ago, I've learned, among many important lessons, how to sit in silence for extended periods of time. This is an impressive feat for me -- I like to talk. A lot.

Let me clarify, I have absolutely no problems with periods of quiet. Like the silence you get when you're on a car ride and everyone's listening to the radio or watching the cars and scenery fly by. I like the quiet you get when you eat with someone and you're so hungry, three words of any sort just get in the way of the fork. I like being so comfortable with someone you can sit in silence next to each other and read a book. That silence isn't really silence to me. It's active quiet -- usually there's some sort of background noise, or some sort of shared appreciation of the void. You aren't partitioned by the silence.

This is the reason why I can't study in libraries, why I write best in cacophanous newsrooms, and why unless there's someone who absolutely needs quiet, quiet it shouldn't be. I actually think better when I have to tune things out. When it's already tuned out, when I'm surrounded by silence, that's when my mind starts to wander, my thoughts start to drift and ten minutes later I realize that I've lost track completely.

I'm currently working the most silent office I've ever been in. The floor is carpeted, the space too large and too spread out, and everyone is cubed.

I've been cubed in silence.

I'm learning to make do. I'm learning ways to be productive like everyone else while surrounded by two walls and no sound. I can't even hear the click of somone else's keyboard.

Then something strange happened yesterday, I looked to the bottom right corner of my screen and realized three hours had gone by. I was so busy, so focused despite the silence, that time had flown and the day was progressing.

Perhaps I was just focusing on the wrong thing?