The Desk in the Middle of the Noise

One of my earliest jobs as a designer put me in a place no designer expects to start.

A massive factory.

Machines humming like a single, endless chord.

Aluminum dust in the air.

Cutters snapping. Compressors exhaling.

Noise with weight.

The interview had gone well.

They liked my drafting.

Then they showed me my desk.

Not in an office.

Not near one.

Right in the center of the fabrication floor.

They handed me my first drawings

and a pair of ear protectors.

That was the job.

At first, I felt out of place. I kept waiting for someone to move me to a quiet corner, somewhere "proper." But the longer I sat in that noise, the more the truth revealed itself.

The fabricators around me were my teachers.

Their hands corrected my lines.

Their rhythm shaped my thinking.

Their noise became a kind of instruction.

It was my first real dojo.

I didn't learn silence there.

I learned stillness.

Zen calls it fudōshin,

the steady mind inside the storm.

It became the skill I would rely on for decades

in jobsite chaos, in difficult meetings, in leadership, in life.

The lesson was simple:

You don't wait for the world to quiet down.

You learn to hear yourself through the noise.

Field Note

Peace is not found.

It is practiced.