I'm sitting here at my writing MeetUp trying to implement all that I've learned from my time at the retreat/conference yet I'm struggling to figure out where to begin. I know that I want to change quite a bit of my memoir, but taking that first swing of the hatchet is more daunting than I thought. I figured that perhaps writing a new blog entry might help to warm up my fingers and writer's cap.
This week was strange trying to get back into the swing of things. For the most part, I had the office to myself but from the moment I walked in the door on Tuesday, I knew it was going to be a LONG week of being triggered. The heating unit had been left on overnight, which seemed odd since the area had record high temperatures of late. As soon as I turned off the HVAC system though, I heard it. A whirring sound with three pitches that didn't seem to go with each other. I thought it was just the HVAC system winding down but after a brief four second pause they repeated... and repeated... and repeated. Every five seconds those three notes... over and over and over... I thought that maybe it would shut off after some time but one hour went into the next... It was surreal! I went downstairs and asked our landlord if someone could come take a look at it. A couple of hours later he came up, noticed it had to do with the fire suppression system, and said he'd get someone to come in and take a look at it.
Long story short... The HVAC guy didn't come in until FRIDAY - four days later! In those four days I kept joking that I wanted to take a baseball bat to the thing. I mean, can you imagine having a random noise happen every five seconds for four days?!? I think it would've driven anyone crazy - even if they didn't have misophonia! At one point, I even had a classical satellite radio station playing loud on my computer speakers. Normally I wouldn't be playing music out loud but I was trying so hard to drown out the whirring sound while still being able to hear the phone ring or if someone entered the office (since my back is normally towards the door). When the Owner of my company came in. I rushed to turn off the music but he was actually okay with it. (Thank goodness!) In fact, he wanted to guess what song was playing. (He was a music major in college.) He guessed right!
Although the HVAC guy wasn't able to completely fix the problem (the component is tied to the fire alarm system, which would have been set off if he tried to replace it), at least he was able to do something enough so that the whirring sound wasn't as loud as it had been. Hopefully, he'll be able to fix it for good soon. :-)