White Noise
Oh my goodness, it has been a minute since I wrote notes here! It was a busy October for Healthcare Improv activities, which is good. It was a busy November from a Healthcare activities perspective. I stayed in the mode of creating and action rather than reflecting, however. For a reasonable but by no means comprehensive chronicling of those events, please click on the socials below!
One of the events not chronicled above is I attended a two-day workshop in New Jersey on becoming a better speaker. It was great from several perspectives. The training and the learning environment were both incredible and will help me immediately be a better speaker. What I keep talking about upon my return however was the interesting, cool, and wildly intelligent people that I met at the experience. It was a group of about 50 people, and they were all working on very interesting ideas and topics. The group was all very positive because despite the massive success in the room, I felt supported and encouraged to share my ideas and activities. It was a great reminder of the improv maxim to “make your scene partner look good”. It is necessary on stage and it does make life easier. The event was a chance for me to experience and feel why that is such good advice
November was filled with many events in my personal life that I am still in the process of sense making. I don’t know that I will get there, but the main theme of these events is the fragility of life. There was death, injury, milestones, birthdays, apologies, reunions, and probably more significant things that got lost in the shuffle of it all. I don’t know that anyone in history has adequately figured out how to properly understand the fragility of life so I will forgive myself if my mind doesn’t wrap all the way around that topic. Someone somewhere said that if you are thinking too much…write, if you are not thinking enough…read. As I put up my Christmas lights (after Thanksgiving!) at the beginning of the week, I listened to the book White Noise by Don Delillo. And now I am writing about it!
I had read the book years ago, but this was the book that I needed. So many life events that emphasized the fragility of life in my own universe. Also a busy month at work. By busy, I don’t mean I saw too many patients. I love seeing patients and interacting with other healthcare professionals to help patients. It is all of the other stuff on top of those activities that is always there, documentation of the patient care, unrealistic expectations from patients, colleagues, and myself, and emails. The book White Noise is a very funny account of a man who is surrounded by a deluge of things that don’t matter and it affects how he interacts with the things that do matter. Also, I am pretty sure that one of the characters was in the cult from Wild Wild Country. Listening to the book as I put up Christmas lights was a pretty funny experience after the month I had had. I had a good laugh at the behavior of the character but then began to ask how much I am giving in to the white noise of my life. This is the first time I have written a blog entry since the beginning of October, but I have no unread emails. My last entry was about playing to the most important thing in an improv scene. Even with that as a focus in my life, I do not always execute. It must be a practice to play to the most important thing. This past month has been an exemplary instance that there will always be distractions from what is most important. Sometimes there will be distractions from VERY important events. Improv has helped me develop that practice in each conversation.
I had a show last Friday where we had four quick scenes and then a long scene. It was great practice at finding what is most important in the scene as it had to be done quickly and repetitively. Improv forces you to develop humor by establishing a connection and then having fun with what was created. Without that connection to a similar idea as your scene partner, the scene will be lifeless, no matter how “funny” the participants in it are. The book White Noise is like watching an improv scee that is intentionally bad and the improvisers keep paying attention to the thing that doesn’t matter. That is something I see in myself both on the stage and in life. I am better at both than I used to be. Practicing improv has forced me to recognize the white noise and play to the most important thing
This week’s assignment is similar to the last assignment. Last assignment was to figure out what the most important thing was in every conversation. This week is to figure out the white noise in your life. What are the things that you engage in that distract from playing to the most important thing