Day 3 - Quiet Era!

So, things happened. 

This is Day 3's post.  Today’s post (Day 4) will be up tonight. Bless!

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The other day my friend asked me if I had listened to the latest episode of a certain podcast. I had been an ardent and consistent listener of the podcast for the longest time ever and I don’t think I had ever missed an episode until recently.

“No, I have not. I do not think I will soon because I am in my quiet era!”

“What does that even mean Stacy?”

Here is what I meant.

We live in a time where we come across a plethora of information whether it's intentional or not. Podcasts, TikTok, X, You Tube. You’d find people at the office working with headphones listening to music or someone talking. But aside from sleep? At what time does our brain get to relax?

At that moment, I felt overwhelmed by the many things I was consuming. Books, music, podcasts, TikTok, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), the thoughts and opinions of people I interact with … all the information I got daily was a lot. I feel like I just need quiet for some time. That led me to prioritize the information I was consuming.

 The first thing on my list I had to reduce was the music I was listening to. For the past year or so, I have been on a mission to explore the music scene of Kenya. This meant listening to Spotify and discovering little-known Kenyan musicians. Oh, and there are a lot of them. That curiosity led to attending some of the music gigs in Nairobi, of the ones I really loved. Nairobi being the hub of buzzing entertainment on the music scene, it did not disappoint. There was at least one event every week. It is just that time and the pockets did not allow me to attend all of them, but I did go for many gigs. My list grew and grew because Nairobi has so many dope performing artists. You can imagine how many music and artists I got to know at that period.

I have this healthy habit where I run in the morning sometimes. For the longest time, I was the type of athlete who used to run with earbuds to listen to a podcast or music. I forgot them one day and I have never gone back to using them when running. On that day, it was like my eyes were wide open and my brain was fully awake. I became aware of my environment even more. I noticed how beautiful the running path was. I noticed the unique trees and vegetation along the track. I became aware of the shops and regular common faces of morning runners along the path over time. I felt sorry for exposing my brain to music or podcasts at 6 AM, at that time, the brain was not even fully awake from the night’s sleep and there I was feeding it with information, very unnecessary if we are being honest.

Friends, I am not playing when I tell you that my art of observation really skyrocketed when I reduced my time consuming so much content. Also, I might be tripping but my is now performing much more optimally with just reduced unnecessary information. Doing things like running, cleaning data, writing, or driving without music or podcast playing in the background also brings surreal calmness. This is what they just call performing on your brain is on 100% focus. Again, maybe it is an age thing, but this is my quiet era and I love it so far.

I would highly recommend Quiet Era to y’all. Give it a shot!