Scared of Silence

Until this year, I basically lived like a forager. The fridge was empty so when ever I got hungry, we ventured out into the world to find something edible.

As an attempt to get healthy in 2017, and maybe even save some money, my daily food intake has become much more “regular.” I start with a Coffiest because breakfast and coffee is too hard in the morning, try to keep my lunch small and cheap, and we do HelloFresh for dinner 4 days a week. Doing this, while also cutting out soda, has equaled a little weight loss since the beginning of the year, but more importantly I feel better day to day.

My trouble meal, as you may have gathered, is lunch. I don’t want to drink a second Soylent because two liquid meals back to back is way too much for me. And I don’t want to pack a lunch to take with me because… well, that’s basically leftovers. So I forage once per day.

I stopped going to fast food joints because the only non-soda beverage is iced tea or coffee; neither of which resembles or tastes like their namesake. And I’ve stopped doing combo numbers off the menu, because fries or chips are often worse than the sandwich or salad that makes up the main meal.

A lighter meal and excuse to leave the office means a chance to squeeze a little more personal time from each day, so I’m either trying to read or write over lunch breaks. It’s a chance to get a head start on my class, blog, or other personal projects, but my biggest hindrance on a typical day is the inescapable sound pollution of our eateries.

Every restaurant, coffee shop, and gastropub blasts shitty music at full tilt. The speakers are situated so you can’t escape it no matter where you sit inside and choosing the patio doesn’t help, because they have tin-can sounding speakers crunching up whatever plays inside for the pleasure of the outdoor eating audience. And because the music never stops, everyone (and I mean everyone) is screaming instead of talking. Add any outdoor noise, like traffic, and my brain can’t sit still for long enough to form a sentence. So, I’m just gonna ask us all a few simple questions:

Are we afraid of allowing ourselves time to sit without distraction? Are we just plain scared of silence? Is it a corporate ploy to keep us stupid? And, finally, why do we accept this as our reality?

We don’t have to turn off the music completely, but having it fade into the background instead of blaring in the foreground would help me avoid headaches, allow me to focus on reading or writing, and keep me from hearing about little Mikey’s bed wetting problems from three tables away.

If that’s too much to ask, I guess I’ll have to start packing a lunch…