{"id":8374,"date":"2016-06-20T10:43:59","date_gmt":"2016-06-20T14:43:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=8374"},"modified":"2019-05-15T13:51:19","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T17:51:19","slug":"quieting-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=8374","title":{"rendered":"Quieting down"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some days, like today, seems there’s nothing but noise in my head. Just stray\u00a0bits of fuzz, flies buzzing, engines idling. A\u00a0very big crowd of people in a stadium all talking at once, not really paying attention to the game that they’re there to watch.<\/p>\n

At work, I was trying to troubleshoot technical problems long distance, with an international team across multiple time zones. Noise to signal ratio is pretty high in those scenarios.<\/p>\n

Then\u00a0I was trying to organize\u00a0some ancestry documents and put them into a family tree. The docs were filled with a lot of names and dates related to people I don’t know. As with\u00a0most historical records, errors and contradictions fogged the facts like a layer of sludge in\u00a0water.<\/p>\n

And then I had to work on my tax return.<\/p>\n

\"blox_4739\"<\/p>\n

I got an extension to file because there was a circular reference in the tax code that screwed me up.<\/p>\n

Today I had to open up that red folder marked Tax Return with all those pieces of paper I got in the mail. My brain was already so tizzied, it was as though I were seeing it all for the first time.<\/p>\n

On top of this, I was using a new tax return software. Although it was much better than my previous\u00a0tax\u00a0software, it was still a learning curve. Took more than a dozen trips to the Help center and two emails to support to figure out some steps.<\/p>\n

\"blox_4778\"<\/p>\n

When I stopped, it was after 7:30. I had to eat dinner\u00a0very quickly so that I could get out for a walk before dark. I ate manchego cheese, salami, and corn on the cob with butter, relishing all the fat, hoping it would lubricate my mental machinery.<\/p>\n

Then I pulled on my running shoes and walked down the street.<\/p>\n

It was dead quiet. No sound at all. Just the soft absorbent green of trees standing still.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_4758\"<\/p>\n

Further down the road I heard the wood thrush singing. Later, a scarlet\u00a0tanager did his chip-churrr, positioned at the bend in the road that he seems to like at twilight.<\/p>\n

I passed a few houses where I could hear the air-conditioner running. Four cars passed me during my 50-minute walk.<\/p>\n

For all the rest of that\u00a0time, it was just me and the trees and the silence.<\/p>\n

My body relaxed into a smooth pace and my face relaxed into a smile.<\/p>\n

I love the silence. Love that I was able to hear nothing for a while.<\/p>\n

It allowed me to sort out\u00a0all those loose bits in\u00a0my mind.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_4749\"<\/p>\n

Today’s penny is a 2014, the year that the IRS acknowledged<\/a> the circular reference in the tax code.<\/p>\n

Today’s illustrations are from January 7.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some days, like today, seems there’s nothing but noise in my head. Just stray\u00a0bits of fuzz, flies buzzing, engines idling. A\u00a0very big crowd of people in a stadium all talking at once, not really paying attention to the game that they’re there to watch. At work, I was trying to troubleshoot technical problems long distance, … read more Quieting down<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[316,321],"tags":[36,646,186,504,978,1043,566],"class_list":["post-8374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-improvisation","category-tress","tag-36","tag-confusion","tag-noise","tag-recovery","tag-silence","tag-taxes","tag-walk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8374"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8388,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8374\/revisions\/8388"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}