What I Noticed in the Quiet

First of all, I missed my family. That part was constant. At first it was the sense of absence. No shoes by the door, no one moving through the kitchen, the house itself seeming paused. Later it became more physical, like an ache that showed up in the evenings and then passed. Sometimes I talked aloud just to make a sound. Not because I was afraid of the silence, but because I had grown used to my voice being one among others.

I spent five weeks at our beach house in Ocean City, and just about three of those weeks alone. I was alone the first week, had ten to twelve eighteen-year-olds with me the second, then alone again for two more, before the family rejoined me at the end. For most of that time I kept my usual hours, sitting at the same table each morning with my coffee and laptop, answering emails, writing scripts, and joining meetings. During the final week, I took off completely. No work, no car, no plans. I stayed at the house or walked. If I needed something, I walked to get it. Groceries came by Instacart and were left on the porch.

Without a car the days narrowed. Not in a way that felt limiting, but in a way that made everything closer and more deliberate. I didn’t leave unless I had to, and I rarely had to. I walked at least once a day, sometimes twice. Mornings to the ocean, evenings by the bay, watching the the sun set.

I set out to change how I ate. Clean, unprocessed foods. Water with lemon. No snacks, no late meals. I ate early and logged everything in an app, not as a discipline, but as a way of seeing.

Most nights I read. Books I had started and stopped, now picked up again. I read chapter by chapter on my Kindle, highlighting as I went. Later those highlights would show up in Readwise, but at the moment I was just reading. Sometimes I sat for hours and didn’t move.

I did not sleep well. That surprised me. I thought the quiet would help, but I woke often around two or three in the morning and stayed awake for longer than I wanted. I would lie in the dark listening to the fan overhead, aware of my back and the way it ached, unable to detach from it. I wasn’t worried about anything. I just couldn’t rest. I wasn’t fully awake, but I wasn’t asleep either.

The days were all the same, and that became the point. I kept the house clean. I kept myself clean. I walked, I ate, I read. I sat on the back patio or rocked on the front porch. The routines didn’t change much. They didn’t need to.

Certain habits became more visible. I reached for my phone more often than I realized. I refreshed the same sites, circled the same loops. I also noticed how still things felt when I sat down to eat without a screen or a voice or a sound. Just the plate, the food, and the room. Not every meal was like that. But enough were.

Now that I’m home again, back inside the shared rhythms of a full house, I’m not trying to hold onto those three weeks. They’re finished. But something in me settled during that time. I walk more now. I pause more before turning something on. I think more about the time and what it’s for.

It wasn’t a transformation. It was just a stretch of time where I could hear things more clearly. Mostly myself.