Two Decades of Noise

What does it mean to be more than twenty years into a profession?

Plumber. Writer. Mechanic. Designer. Bus driver. Furniture maker. Nurse.

What is the meaning of the work you’ve chosen to do?
And when does that work start to define who you are?

I’m entering my mid forties now. A father of two. A husband. A pet owner. A son. A brother. A designer. A coach. A manager. A salesman.

And somewhere in that stack of roles, I still try to understand what is actually me.

There’s the external version. The one shaped by expectations, feedback, titles, and outcomes. And then there’s the internal version. Quieter. Harder to articulate. But more true.

The tension between the two is where most of life seems to happen.

Rick Rubin writes about tuning into frequency. About creative people as antennas, receiving and shaping what’s already out there. Taste isn’t invented. It’s refined.

But clarity weakens when there’s too much noise.

At twenty, everything felt possible.

A new universe. Endless input. No real pressure to define anything. I wasn’t asking who I was. I wasn’t even asking what I wanted to make.

I just didn’t want to stand still.

Forward was the only direction that mattered.
Not because I knew where I was going, but because staying put felt like failure.

So I moved. I tried things. I tuned into whatever felt right at the time.
I followed curiosity more than intention.

And in that, I found freedom.

Curiosity created motion.
Motion created learning.
Learning slowly shaped taste.

The only times I felt stuck were when I held too tightly to something I thought was “right.”
Something learned. Adopted. Assumed.

That’s when things narrowed.
That’s when everything flattened.

Now, in my forties, the problem isn’t a lack of input. It’s the opposite.

There’s too much of it.

Too many opinions.
Too many expectations.
Too many voices competing for attention.

The volume is constant.

And when the input exceeds your ability to process it, everything blends together.

Like trying to push every color through a single pen.

You don’t get something richer.

You get brown.

Not in color, but in clarity. Not a single pure wavelength.

That’s what confusion feels like now.
Not a lack of ideas, but too many at once.

And the strange part is, this is the stage of life where you’re expected to lead.

To decide.
To shape direction.
To put your own perspective back into the world.

But if you’re not careful, you’re just amplifying noise.

So maybe the work now is different.

Not to seek more.

But to listen better.

To turn things down.
To edit aggressively.
To choose what not to engage with.

To keep hold of what actually resonates.

Less searching. More tuning.

Curiosity still matters. But it shifts.
It becomes less about chasing everything new and more about noticing what stays with you.

Less goal-oriented.
More gear-oriented.

Knowing when to push.
When to hold.
When to shift down.
When to stop entirely.

Progress isn’t always acceleration.

Sometimes it’s finding the right pace so you don’t burn out.
So you don’t stall.

So you can keep moving.

Because maybe that’s still the point.

Not arrival.
Not definition.

Motion.

But now, it’s intentional.

A quieter kind of forward.