Underappreciated silence

Silence is hard to come by in a city.

Perhaps the most peaceful nights I experienced during four years living in Downtown Pittsburgh came in the early morning hours of a calm winter snow storm.

I loved those nights. I loved just walking down the street and actually hearing my own thoughts.

I vividly remember experiencing my surroundings during my first trip home freshman year. I got out of the car in the early evening - rush hour in the city - and was stunned by the peace that draped a suburban neighborhood. I took that peace for granted for the first 18 years of my life.

Silence is underappreciated, but only when its doses are infrequent.

"Sometimes, quiet is violent."

The lyrics from a Twenty One Pilots song ring true during moments of extended silence. One can get trapped inside their mind, alone with nothing but consuming and crushing thoughts and the feeling of loneliness and insecurity.

Finding silence in life can prove difficult, but peaceful moments are invaluable.

Our world is consumed by noise, especially in the media.

The news cycle never ends. Journalism is a 24/7 job, even though 40 hours is all that a company will pay for in one week.

I try to take advantage of every off day and downtime moment I have to detox from the news and the world. I never thought I would enjoy off days.

Mine come on Thursdays and Fridays; those are my weekends.

I live within walking distance of a really quiet park. I enjoy spending my off days either shooting around at the infrequently used basketball courts or just sitting on a park bench and listening to the sounds of silence around me: crickets, playful birds, the occasional child's laughter from the opposite end of the neighborhood. There's a stream that runs beside the path that leads from my apartment complex to the park. Once the birds realize I don't pose a threat, they zip around each other, bouncing between the trees and bathing in the stream. Our neighborhood also has, by my count, about a dozen photogenic deer that roam around the area.

You don't get that in the city.

Instead, you get sirens, screams, and screeching breaks or horns from traffic.

You don't get silence in the newsroom. If you do, something's wrong.

The police scanners are always buzzing. The television has to always be on, tuned into either our competitor or cable news to follow developments of a national breaking story. The phone constantly rings, rarely though is answering it beneficial to our newsroom. People call asking for scores of games, listings for their favorite show, complaints about our newscast, questions about their signal strength, or just to have someone to talk to on a lonely night. Sometimes, a story tip or another station is on the other end. Cell phones are dinging and vibrating with constant push notifications and text messages. Everyone's computer makes the same notification noise when an email gets sent to the newsroom.

That's just the beginning.

I love the noise and rush of the newsroom and the city environment.

Escaping that sometimes is healthy.

Sometimes, after a long night, when all of my neighbors are already asleep and I'm just getting back to my apartment, I'll stand outside and lean against the large tree outside my door and just listen to the sounds of the deep night and look at the stars. Those deep breaths are usually the most satisfying.

We don't appreciate silecne if we're surrounded by noise. Conversely, we don't appreciate silecne if that's all we experience.

One of the most important things we can do is strike that balance and learn to appreciate peace amidst chaos.

Highs and Lows

This job will take you down every emotional road possible on any given day without hesitation or warning. 

The mental battle that television news sends you on daily is not for the faint of heart. I think that's the biggest challenge that I've had to learn to work with during my first few months working in the industry. 

They tell you how difficult it is in textbooks, they warn you that you'll have to hold your emotions in until you get home, and they stress that the daily challenges don't get easier. If anything, you learn how to work with around those mental barriers. It doesn't become 100 percent real until you're completely immersed in the business.

There are days when I go home and can't stop smiling because of how well a story turned out or from a positive compliment in the newsroom about my work. There are other days when I go home beating myself up over simple mistakes that feel much larger in the moment. 

Oftentimes, it's a combination of the two, with a million other feelings mixed in my brain blender.

"You're only good as your next game," a former boss in the sports industry told me repeatedly. It doesn't matter if I think my story turned out well and if I feel as if I made a legitimate impact because of my work. It also doesn't matter if I stumbled over a word or had a typo in a story. The highs and lows of a normal day are irrelevant when the sun rises the next morning. 

I remind myself of that every day, but I can't seem to get the negatives through my head.

The mistakes and shortcomings feel monumental in the moment; they're often not too meaningful. Hindsight doesn't often offer a cure to the feeling that I let my team around me down because of an error. 

I beat myself up over the little things; I'm my biggest critic. There's little time to sulk in negativity when an objective needs completed. 

I'm well aware that I have a job to do and people are counting on me to effectively and accurately complete that job. When I remind myself of that, I'm able to fight past the negativity in my head after doing something only I really noticed and felt. 

Along with the mental highs and lows of my performance on the job comes the actual job itself. 

I have had more days than I can count already that have been mental roller coasters and then some. I started one day at the scene of a drowning death and ended it at a gym dedication ceremony. One day last week, I covered a massive construction project coming to I-79, a grant received by a local folklife center, and helped break a disturbing story about a woman who sexually assaulted a 2-month-old family member. 

Another day recently, I covered a Marion County Commission meeting that involved two stories regarding "Non-profit Day" and the possibility of a former Gateway Clipper passenger boat coming to a local city. My third story of the day involved a tractor-trailer that went off the road and plowed through a tattoo studio. I showed up to the scene of that crash minutes after talking to someone about going on a boat for a wedding, only to interview people who were cleaning up their destroyed livelihoods. Oh. Then I went to the courthouse to get a criminal complaint regarding two people charged with child neglect after children were found in a dirty and rat-infested home.

That was one day.

Some are easier and lighter than others, but the heavy ones have really taught me how to flip my emotional switches in an instant. I've done that for years at the anchor desk - transitioning from sad to happy stories - but it's another thing to do it out in the field.

I love the adrenaline rush that comes with working in the news business, but the emotional highs and lows drain people out of this industry quickly. What you just read was only scratching the surface of the mental battle faced every day in television news. I hope to touch on others when the time is right.

With that being said, I love where I'm at right now professionally. My station has given me the opportunity to grow in ways that other stations wouldn't at this stage in my life. My co-workers are phenomenal human beings and all watch out for each other consistently. It's been a nice transition. I'm glad this is where I ended up at the start of my career.

Everything happens for a reason. I trust that those reasons will continue revealing themselves through my daily professional and personal highs and lows.

UPDATE

Things happen for a reason, eh? Shortly after I closed out of writing, for some reason, I went to YouTube. I'm trying to go home now after a long day at work. I can't remember for the life of me why I went to YouTube.

With one click, I came across an interview with my first favorite baseball player, Jack Wilson.

He talks about making errors as a shortstop in baseball and the importance of not keeping the mental images of mistakes linger in the mind. I'd say it was fairly topical and relevant after the night I had that triggered this post.

Give it a watch below.