Serenity Now!

Don't know if you're a Seinfeld fan or not, but there's an episode where George's father takes anger management to the extreme. Someone tells him every time he gets angry that he needs to say "serenity now" to himself to calm himself down. By the end of the episode, he's screaming "SERENITY NOW" at the top of his lungs.

I don't have an anger problem, but I certainly have a serenity problem on some days. The way our offices are set up, the pastor's offices are around the outside wall of the office building, and the admins and support ministry staff office in cubicles in the middle. That means there is always a lot of activity going on right outside my door.

Our staff - particularly our admins - have a pretty good time most days, which is a good thing; laughter breeds a great work environment.

But fun times and laughter aren't great when you're coming down the stretch on preparing your sermon or studying a difficult passage.

I've tried listening to music, but music with words distracts me too. And I tried classical music on Accuradio which worked fine and dandy until Haydn's Surprise symphony came on and nearly made me jump through the roof.

But I've found a fix for those of you who are like me; and it will save you hours in your day. This year for Christmas my inlaws bought me a pair of noise cancellation headphones. Then, a couple of weeks ago I stumbled on a site called Iserenity that plays different types of white noise, and started playing them on my noise cancellation headphones at a pretty low level.

Now, the admins outside could have a luau complete with hula dancing and conga lines and I wouldn't know. It's glorious.

Check it out. My favorite two are "Airplane Aria" and "Library Lullaby."

2 comments:

Graham said...

great sites Chris, thanks for the heads up!

lisa said...

I like pandora dot com. You just type in an artist that you like and it starts playing similar styles of musicians/bands/music. You can veto the ones you don't particularly like and check the ones you'd like to hear more of. I've found some great obscure stuff on there. I'm definitely going to check out the Iserenity one though. sounds lovely.

I saw a greeting card in Kinkos recently that said "I drink green tea. I do yoga. I had a massage. And I still wanna slap the snot out of somebody." boy, I've had Those days. :)