Controlling the SFX of My Life

How I’d use sports tech to sweeten the sounds & voices in my head

“He shoots! He scores!” Goal-horn blasts. The crowd goes wild. The horn blares. Arena rocks. Stoked players on the ice hug, hop, holler, and spit at each other, celebrating the goal, “Fuck ya!”

Hockey’s back. The NHL is into regular-season play with no fans in the stands, of course. But I’ve been impressed: the boys in the production truck are doing an awesome job piping in synthetic audio — a suite of crowd noises and sound effects (SFX) — masterfully mixed to give viewers the sense of a pro hockey rink packed to the gills with 20,000 rabid fans.

Time to fill the empty seats in my mind.

I’m fine working from home, but most days, there’s lots of empty space in my noggin’. Ticketless thoughts — dullness, procrastination, doubt, self-criticism, guilt, anxiety, addictions — bust in and have a heyday messing with my best-laid, game-day plans. I do my best to ignore them, but hell, if I can’t keep them out, maybe I can drown them out. These days, anything’s worth a shot.

In full control of my imaginary NHL soundboard during another long day of iffy self-talk, here’s how I’d pump up the raw energy and sick vibes — even if they are fake.

Monday-morning CPR.

Oh man, not another week of the same, old dull routine. Crap, didn’t I just snap my work laptop shut? Feels like Friday @ 5 was minutes ago. Now I have to muster up a smile and do it all over again. Five more days. Fifty more weeks this year. So cold and still dark outside. Cue the week’s first panic attack. Wait… let’s try this:

SFX: Rally cries that start with a few fans in the crowd — “Let’s go Wild!” — that builds into raucous cheering and applause from everyone in attendance.

OK. I can do this. Using the home-team crowd to push through. I feel them behind me. Rolling out of bed now.

Slacker status-meeting.

Shit. Didn’t get my spreadsheets updated on the weekend. I’ll get called out and slammed for not keeping up. My team-mates are overachievers. I’m skating on thin ice. They know it. I’m doomed—just one hour into the workweek. Hold on. There’s hope. Sound up on:

SFX: Crisp cracks of pucks hitting hockey sticks. Skates cutting through ice as players advance on their opponent. Voices of players calling for passes as the puck gets snapped around with perfection.

Whoa. Team’s tight. We have practiced this. Rushing up the ice together. Making clean passes and nicely executing everything to hit this week’s deadline. Mistakes are history. I shake ‘em off. Head’s back in the game and focused on a quick goal.

Noon deadline nailed.

This is good. SFX working. Been heads down after the lift from my last team meeting. Then I cranked like a mofo to get the first draft of my presentation done on time. I loaded it with great stats, strategy, and details I never thought I had in me. Feeling decent. Hitting send. Then hitting:

SFX: Peak-volume, Minnesota Wild’s goal song: “Jump Around” by House of Pain. Fans slammin’ on the glass. Insane cheering. Crowd noise swells to outrageous decibel levels.

Love it. I knew I’d knock out my deliverable. Powerful SFX confirmed it after I had doubted it but pushed through it to meet the goal. (I’m playing that one again.)

Elliptical evasion.

Caution: Entering dangerous territory here. My December mindset had me cancel my gym and yoga memberships, then drop a pretty penny on a new elliptical, home-training machine. Problem is I spend more time dusting it than cranking on it. Honestly, my hip’s kinda hurting today. Think I’ll work out tomorrow. Wait. What’s that I hear? Whoa, things are getting nasty…

SFX: Profanity filter activated to mute real-time, swearing, cursing, cussing and X-Rated comments about players’ moms.

Things heat up in my head when good and evil voices get all riled up. OK. I get the message today: hip’s stiff but good to go. Hopping on the machine now. Everyone else — chill.

Bleak news break.

Turn it on. No. Yes, turn it on. Gimme that! Just for a minute. No. It’s on.

Yes, I’m a tad addicted to a hit of CNN every afternoon. I click the remote for what I tell myself to be a five-minute peek at world events. Bad idea. Five turns into fifteen turns into fifty. I fall behind on work I can control; I get depressed by gross global situations I can’t. I instinctively trigger:

SFX: Assortment of vicious cat calls from fans, max sound on “Ref, you suck! Ref, you suck!”

Good to hear others trash authority figures. Helps me vent about my feelings toward asshole politicians who ignore human suffering. The pain is real. Family, friends, neighbors lost. Yet all we can do is scream at the refs. As in the game of life, they have all the control.

Anxious shift to my stories.

Did I write enough on the weekend? Will I hit my word count tonight? I hate this talk. But I know it well. Sometimes — like during National Novel Writing Month in November— I’m a machine and knock out 1,700 words every day for 30 days. Then there’s December: All my writing apps are on my ass. Grammarly, for instance, sent me an email assuming my app was turned off: they didn’t see any of my words to analyze. Sounds like:

SFX: The painful clank of iron as a player rips a puck off the goalpost but doesn’t score, the sound echoing through the empty hockey rink for what seems like eternity.

Oh, so close! First frustration. Then anger with yourself. Then holy shit! The puck rebounds right back on your stick and you have another shot. I love this. Who cares how much I wrote yesterday, last week, or last month? Fingers on my laptop right now. Fire away! Again and again and again.

Facing personal fears.

Game clock’s draining on another day. Been a long one. A winning day? Hard to say. Shit. I hear myself overthinking my productivity, purpose, and plans for 2021. Corporate gig keeps me cushioned but am I helping any cause? Should I maintain the status quo or take a crazy, creative leap? Continue living in the U.S. or bail and retreat to Canada? Demons of doubt have descended on me. I bang on the last sound effect of the day:

SFX: A quiet, restless murmur of the home-town crowd freaked about the outcome of the game.

It’s not the one I wanted. What I get is a stillness in the stands that is every player's worst nightmare: the crowd’s checked out. Nothing good’s happening on the ice to fire them up. It’s my fault. It’s all on me to turn things around. Game clock is my worst enemy now.

I furiously push, twist, slam, yell at every switch on my soundboard. I get nothing—only silence.

Silence is the most empowering sound effect of all.

I squirm. I want out of this SFX experiment. Need to change the channel and kill the chatter in my head. Grab another beer—anything to escape the agony of this emptiness.

Then the real gift hits me like a bone-rattling bodycheck into the boards.

NHL rinks are empty these days — just like my mind’s natural state. I can try tiling the ice in my favor by pumping a ton of phony voices, sounds, or ovations into my head. But the true winning strategy is to listen to the emptiness. From there, I can control every dial, button, and toggle of the thoughts and emotions I want to amplify or which ones I choose to diminish and even suppress.

So many opportunities to mute the artificial noise I let into my head.

It’s the sweetest sound of all — the joyous feedback loop of me cheering for my real self doing what I love.

Let’s connect! I’d love to read your stories and share more of mine.

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