So, my life – literally – is not without road noise. While we live on a road with just eight houses, there is a highway about a half-mile away and with only a fishing pond and a farmer’s field between us and the highway, we tend to get some road noise. Inside the house, you don’t hear it. In the back yard, you generally don’t hear it either. But obviously, in the front yard, you hear it. Now, the highway isn’t that busy and it is a half-mile away (perhaps even farther), but it’s still there. I’m often reminded of John Mellencamp’s “Little Pink Houses” where he sings, “They’ve got an interstate running through their front yard. You know, they think they’ve got it so good.” Yep, there’s an interstate out there.
To fix this from a literal standpoint, I’ve thought of several options including my latest one: plant a forest in the first half of our front yard so it physically blocks some of the noise. Darryl didn’t seem thrilled with that idea, but candidly, I am. And, if I stress how that he won’t have to mow down there, he’ll get excited for it. Plus, a mix of evergreens, some maple trees and then some dense low-growing ground cover may be just what we need to get rid of any noise.
However, in the not-so-literal sense, I still get anxiety-ridden road noise in my life. Sometimes it’s just work noise and obviously, I still need to expect that. Sometimes, it’s home noise and with all of the renovations and time spent planning, saving and doing, well, that’s to be expected, too. But the other road noise in my life is just the chaos I tend to invite in.
Let me explain. I’m one of those people that if I get worried about something I saw on the news, I keep checking my phone – as often as every half-hour – to get updates. It’s like I can’t rest until there’s some resolution. Other times, I’ll get fixated on a real or imagined problem. That’s especially true with emails. My husband is fond of saying that we all become actors when we read emails. That’s true. I inflect tone, meaning and emotion in emails that aren’t necessarily there. And other times, I invite the chaos of imagined problems into my life. I either take on someone else’s anxiety, create anxiety on behalf of that person or simply try to make sure everyone else has this same chance at happiness that I’ve been given.
Candidly, all of the above is – in my professional and personal opinion – hokum. I need to stop that. Most people generally don’t appreciate it when you get anxious for them. It’s easier said than done, of course, but I still need to stop it. Just as the occasional loud truck’s noise makes it to my front deck when I’m working outside, so does the occasional hokum noise make it to some area near my head or my heart when I let my crazy go, well, crazy.
I’ve learned over the past few years how to control my crazy better. Mostly, it’s by taking a nap. Seriously. Most of the time when my crazy goes crazy and the road noise is too loud, it’s because I haven’t slept well. As a mild insomniac, I feel instantly better after a 20-30 minute nap. The other things I’ve learned to do? Well, talking it out is one and thankfully between one husband, two sisters and a handful of besties, I’ve got some sympathetic ears. Yoga helps as well. So does taking a long walk. And finally, working on a project is a final trick to help shut out the road noise.
Today’s one of those days when I’ve found a project to clear out the road noise. I’m not especially anxious about anything, but generally anxious about a lot of things right now, honestly. It seems to me that living through a worldwide pandemic with lots of economic uncertainty can do that to you. But this project? Well, it may just be right up my alley.
You see, we’ve been creating a laundry/butler’s pantry and powder room out of what was once a misplaced closet and a laundry/half-bath space. In general, that’s gone a bit better than I expected but we do have to squeeze a lot of stuff in a small space. So, I found a toilet that’s only 24.5 inches deep and I custom-ordered a vanity and sink to fill the nook space. Now, I’ve got to source one final thing: a linen closet that can double as my husband’s shoe closet. Straight up, it’s the only thing he’s asked for out of this project.
But again, I can’t find an off-the-shelf answer. So, I’m back to a special order or, in this case, a custom build. And that’s enough to distract me from my crazy. There’s a local craftsman in town that advertises custom-built furniture and this sounds like the perfect project to give him a try. Plus, I can design the cabinet myself, taking the best of all of the options I’ve found online to create exactly what I’m looking for. Finally, I get to obsess over paint colors for the new cabinet to my heart’s desire. Candidly, I could probably spend the whole day in front of the paint chip aisle in the home improvement store and never get bored.
And with that, I can drown out the road noise. Being creative and feeling like I’m making progress on a project we’ve been working on since mid-spring really helps me to shake off the distractions and get back to living life. Today, I need that.
And I’ve learned over the years that it’s okay to take care of myself but tuning out the road noise. We used to just call it getting distracted. Today, we have better identified it as “self-care.” Whatever it is and however we define it, it works for me.
The Yuppie Homesteader 