Glorious Silence

I'm sitting in my office, waiting for a SNG to start.  My wife just left to visit her mother.  The cats are sleeping. Nothing is going on outside.  It is totally, completely silent.  I live near a busy street, so even as I type this, I'm starting to hear a little traffic noise.  But just for a few seconds, there was nothing.  I was excited that it was so quiet.  It's hard to explain, but when it's really quiet, I feel better, the silence is uplifting.

Sometimes I forget how the slightest thing can distract me.  A cat that wants some attention.  A few words from the television heard through the office door.  Someone shouting outside.  It all matters.

Something a lot of people probably don't know about ADD is that priorities can get messed up, because someone with ADD can concentrate obsessively on something that he finds interesting, to the exclusion of all else.

Fortunately, I love playing poker.  When that SNG starts, I'll be locked in.  When it's this quiet, I go into a zone where I see things more clearly, and I pick up on small things like a player hesitating just a second longer than usual before he bets.  Sometimes I don't even realize where I am.  It's hard to explain, but I feel like I'm part of the game, inside it somehow, like I've stepped into the virtual reality of the poker table on the monitor.

My SNG is starting now, and it's still really quiet, a glorious, almost complete silence.  I can't remember the last time it was this quiet, both inside and outside.  Sometimes I wear earplugs when it's noisy.  Maybe I should wear them all the time.

I know of a poker pro who keeps an office in a building separate from his house. Today, I understand why.