When the Background Gets Loud Again
What relocation reveals about the noise we stop hearing
There’s an obvious story here, so let’s not pretend it isn’t obvious.
For decades, New Jersey winter never bothered me. Snow came. Shovels came out. Ice did its thing. Life continued. Sometimes I even liked it—the quiet after a storm, the clean slate feeling, the permission to slow down. I’d escape to warmer places now and then, sure, but when I came back, winter felt… normal. Familiar. Almost comforting.
Then Florida happened.
Now I find myself back in New Jersey during this in-between phase—call it reverse snowbirding—and something has shifted. The same snow, the same cold, the same routine suddenly feels like static. Not tragic. Not dramatic. Just a quiet, internal: Yeah… I’m done with this.
That part is predictable. Instagram has trained us well. Sunshine reels. Year-round warmth. Palm trees and poolside productivity. No one needs a PhD to diagnose that psychology.
But that wasn’t the moment that caught my attention.
The real tell came on the highway.
The Insanity I Somehow Missed
When I first spent real, non-vacation time in Florida, the driving hit me like a slap. I-4 felt feral. People doing things that suggested either divine protection or total indifference to mortality. Then—without warning—someone cruising at 50 in a 70 like they were escorting a parade no one asked for. Sprinkle in tourists, retirees, and GPS-induced panic attacks, and you’ve got a rolling sociology experiment.
My reaction was immediate: These roads are insane.
Fast-forward a few months. I’m back in New Jersey. Same roads I’ve driven for years. Same exits. Same aggressive choreography.
And suddenly I’m thinking: Wait… were they always this nuts?
Not a little nuts. More nuts.
That’s the part that wouldn’t let go.
New Jersey drivers didn’t change overnight. The roads didn’t mutate. The culture didn’t suddenly ferment into madness while I was gone.
So why did it feel new?
The Volume Knob on “Normal”
Here’s the distinction that matters: most of what drives us crazy isn’t new—it’s just been quietly normalized.
Our brains don’t measure reality in absolute terms. They measure it relative to whatever we’ve been swimming in lately. What once felt like background noise becomes invisible. Until you leave the room.
Snow in New Jersey wasn’t “easy.” It was just familiar. Aggressive driving wasn’t “safe.” It was just expected. My nervous system had calibrated itself to a certain level of friction and filed it under this is life.
Florida reset the dial.
Not because Florida is calmer—it isn’t—but because it’s differently chaotic. Different rhythm. Different texture. Different absurdities. And once that became my new baseline, the old one re-entered my awareness at full volume.
It’s like living next to train tracks. After a while, you don’t hear the trains. Until you spend a few months somewhere with a different train sound and come back wondering how you ever slept.
That’s not weakness. That’s biology.
A Stoic Footnote (Without the Robe)
There’s a related idea buried in ancient Stoic practice. Philosophers like Seneca encouraged people of means to occasionally live below their station—simple food, rough clothes, discomfort by design—not as punishment, but as recalibration.
The point wasn’t suffering.
The point was contrast.
When you voluntarily step outside your norm, you regain the ability to see it.
My move wasn’t a Stoic exercise. No toga involved. But the effect was similar. Distance turned unconscious tolerance into conscious choice. It revealed how much of daily life we absorb without questioning simply because it’s been playing on loop long enough.
And that’s the part worth sitting with.
What Else Is Just Noise?
If snow and driving can disappear into the background for years, what else are we not noticing?
Work habits that quietly drain us.
Conversations that never quite say anything.
Systems we complain about but never truly examine.
Relationships we navigate on autopilot.
None of these announce themselves as problems. They don’t shout. They hum.
Until a change—geographic or otherwise—turns the volume back up.
🌱Seed Thought: If you want to understand your life more clearly, don’t just improve it—interrupt it. The things that bother you most are often the things you’ve stopped hearing.
Well this one hit home. I believe this is the sentiment I was trying to explain to people back in school, my "South to North" journey, and then again when going from Virgina/Carolinas to living in NJ. My wife sure as heck doesn't get it.
Yes, the noise self-calibrates. Then you get jarred when your environment changes. For me, I still remember what it was growing up Southern. The different driving environments between NJ, Boston, and Virginia are wonderfully illustrative. They're different, not in a good or bad way necessarily, but different. They reflect the culture(s).
Anyway, thanks for putting it in words. I grok.