As I am pondering how to make more creative moments in my everyday life, I came across this thought-provoking post entitled the sound of silence by Kelly Easton at the Storyteller’s Inkpot. In this post, Easton writes how her “overwhelming urge to write” dwindled. She then noticed how she filled her world with sound. She exercised to music, cooked to NPR, and drove with the radio on. Easton tried silence, and her urge to write returned. She opines that our society avoids silence, but writing thrives in it.

My own life provides little silence without conscious effort. I am a homeschooling mother of three boys. That alone provides a constant, often less-than-harmonious soundtrack. And Easton’s right. I tend to fill those rare silences with sound: television in the background, my ipod at the gym, the radio in the car or the shower, and internet radio on my laptop. And I don’t find silence comfortable at first. However, my best insights occur in the quiet moments when I can finally and literally hear myself think.

The next time I am feeling a creative dry spell, I think I will turn the volume off.