14. What kind of noise do you need to work? #LifeWideLearning16@bhwilkoff
— Zac Chase (@MrChase) January 14, 2016
I fidget, relentlessly. I have two rings that do not stay on my fingers for more than 20 minutes at a time. I run my fingers through my hair and rub my beard stubble. I tap on seemingly everything. I crack my knuckles loudly. Whether on my laptop or on the desk, it is a rhythm that syncopates my thoughts. And then there is the clacking on the keys. I do not simply let press them down. I hammer them into action, as if it was the hardest manual typewriter in the world. I need to hear the clack, clack, clack to know that something is being created in each moment.
It is the verbal expression of work, though, that is the most noticeable. The “ba, ba, ba” of an new idea or the half hummed lyric of a song that gets me to remember which task I was on. In its most pronounced form, I will actually sing what I am doing or the words I am writing. I hope this is endearing because I really don’t know how else to work.
I have “lost” my rings to the floor in more meetings and classrooms than I care to count. I have come back to consciousness from a tapping episode only to realize that I was the only one who needed those taps to keep on going. I have cracked my knuckles at times of pure silence, trusting that the interruption made for a nice transition to discussion and debate. These are the noises of work, the sounds of thinking and building and collaborating. Or, at least they are for me.
