No Stupid Questions

My ability to zone out and get lost in my head is legendary.

Although, I have used headphones for grocery shopping during busy times because music helps keep me from becoming enraged at stupid people.

Because I need to be aware of my surroundings. Street harassment, being followed, etc.

I've yet to find a device that can survive going 30 meters plus under water. So I'm forced to listen to the world around me.

But seriously there are a lot of times where you need to hear the world around you. Sometimes I go for a walk around town with my earbuds and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I work on a project with music playing and other times it's not feasible.

I'll get back to this, but I first need to complete my post called "Have you ever spoken to someone in person?"

I basically just jack it constantly. Whenever, wherever.

Outside with other people is a dangerous place. Environmental awareness is needed. You'll need your eyes and ears to sense danger.

I let my thoughts wander, and pay attention to the world around me. I've been forced to do this since I can't wear earbuds while my ear piercings heal.

Listen to the voices in my head

There's a passage in the book Fahrenheit 451 where the author talks about people keeping themselves distracted with music 24/7. Instead of listening respectfully to great music with great attention, they listen to silly songs.

Also, I remember all the stories I've read about people who were mugged because they weren't paying attention.

I like the sound of what's going on around me. I enjoy catching little snippets of random conversations, the birds singing, the exhaust notes of passing vehicles. I prefer to be aware of my surroundings instead of insulting myself from them. At home, I'm very literally in the woods, and occasionally feral hogs may cross my path, but they make a lot of noise. When I'm in town the variety of sounds is novel and entertaining to me.

I wear earbuds at work, or if I'm running my tractor or lawnmower. I do drive, but I don't always have the radio playing in my car. Sometimes quiet is just nice.

I usually commute in in-ears. Sometimes I just want to listen to the world. Its noise, sounds, people talking in train/tram/bus.

I have also noticed that listening to something leaves me out of my own mind. When I used to walk from school to home alone without music, I would think about things in my life much more. So, sometimes I leave my phones in a pocket to focus on my mental.

I look at and listen to what's going on around me, and think about what I see and hear.

My thing is that if I'm outside relaxing, I want the birds and bugs and wind. If I can't have those, headphones aren't an acceptable replacement, so I'll fuck off back inside.

If I'm outside as in going about town, I don't want my hearing compromised. It's a fate safety issue. Even bone conduction gear is a distraction that I'm not okay with. Like, it isn't even about being hit by a car or whatever, it could be something as simple as a shopping cart that's loose banging into me. My crippled ass would be in the floor.

My brain is enough stimulation for me. If I'm out in the world, my brain is going to be going a mile a minute scoping everything out. Doesn't matter how many times I've been in a given location.

Tell me, on the street after the second corner you turn on the way to the store, how many trees are there along the sidewalk? What kind of trees are they?

There's an interesting book called "On Looking" where the author walked around a city block with 11 experts in different fields and saw the world through their eyes. Here's an article about it: https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/08/12/on-looking-eleven-walks-with-expert-eyes/

The world is endlessly interesting, even in the mundane. Even if it's just keeping an eye out for new street art or thinking about a project or figuring out what I will do this weekend or just listening to my body and feeling the new aches or am old pain going away. There's often not a need for music for me.

I genuinely have never paired Bluetooth headphones to my phone. So I haven't worn headphones for a phone since the 3.8mm jack was taken from us.

I listen to music when I drive and I wear headphones on my PC.

Walking? 99% of the time that's exercise like hiking, and I raw dog that shit. Listen to nature and and my surroundings.

As someone who loves music and listens to it every chance I get, I honestly never got into using headphones and walking. It just doesn't feel right to me. I am also very attentive to my surroundings, and if I feel like I don't know what's exactly going on, I really don't like that feeling. It may also be a generational thing? Im in my 40s, and the headphone market was a bit different 20 years ago when I was younger, and none of that really appealed to me. I never even had an iPod, I owned a zune lol.

I usually choose to have a podcast or music on, but sometimes it's really nice to just appreciate my surroundings. I like to hear birdsong, or the wind, the rain. Even cars passing. It's nice to be grounded in the world.

Even when I have music, I spend most of my time when I walk (which is a lot) not looking down at the ground. I look around, and I try to appreciate the little things. The other day, I noticed a really, really polished front door on a house I was walking past. The wood was so bright red and all of the metal was this gleaming silver, it was really striking! There are wild parakeets in the city I live in, so getting the chance to see these beautiful green birds swoop overhead is a treat, too. Where I live is quite hilly, so getting to see what I think are beautiful views of the urban sprawl interspersed with big tree plumages in the green spaces is pleasant, too. Sometimes it's quite imposing, it's not always a pretty and cheery sight, but it's always beautiful.

When I don't have music or podcasts playing, I feel like I can appreciate those sights a bit more. Picking up on snippets of other people's lives is interesting, and I find my mood is easier regulated when I just ground myself in the world around me rather than disappearing up into my head with the podcast or music playing. If I have sound on that I focus on, I'll often not really remember my walking to and from work, but if I'm just experiencing the world, I'll usually find something memorable. I find that slowing down and taking the time away from tech has been nice for me, sometimes.

I try to pay attention to my surroundings because I like being alive. When I do wear headphones I put them in pass through mode.

Why would you choose to do that?

I'm easily distracted and am usually occupied with my own thoughts. So, not hearing traffic, other people, and my general surroundings is actually stressful for me; relying on vision alone would be dangerous. I do a lot better keeping my ears open so I can relax, muse about this or that in my head, and let any sudden sounds or irregularities in my environment catch my attention.

Edit: By musing, I'm actively problem-solving fix-it situations in my house, thinking about software projects I have going, exercising mindfulness for better mental heath, self-assessing where my body aches/hurts, building fictional narratives for D&D, and so on. It's seldom idle time up in here.

When I listen to music it's the only thing I can do, which makes me anxious about walking into traffic or off a cliff.

I have profound hearing loss, too.

Sometimes I enjoy just basking in the dark morass of my own thoughts.

~~Live in the present!!~~ No
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