Written in 2015.
There is a strange discomfort that comes with quiet.
Not the restful kind, but the sort that arrives when you stop being visible. When there are fewer responses, fewer signals that you are being seen or acknowledged.
It is easy to mistake that silence for failure.
We are used to momentum looking a certain way. Activity. Output. Proof. When those things slow down, doubt tends to fill the space instead.
I noticed how quickly my own thinking shifted, how silence became something to explain away or justify, rather than simply experience. As if being less present to others meant I was somehow less present at all.
The truth is quieter than that.
Not everything meaningful announces itself.
Not all progress makes noise.
Sometimes, quiet is a sign that attention has moved inward. That work is happening below the surface. That things are being felt or understood rather than displayed.
That does not make the discomfort disappear. It just gives it context.
Quiet can feel like failure when you have been taught to measure yourself by reaction. Unlearning that takes time.
And it still does.