The circus comes to town

When I was a young reporter, I looked up one evening from my small cubicle and looked around in shock. An hour earlier you could have heard a pin drop in the newsroom. It was empty. Now it was like a three ring circus. The buzz in the building was so loud it gave me a headache.

I couldn’t concentrate for anything.

In one section, the sports editor was sitting at his desk chatting casually with a local high school football coach who stopped by the office. The coach must have just come straight from practice. He had a whistle around his neck and was shouting like he was trying to be heard two football fields away. His voice was like a megaphone. He was telling the editor about some young sophomore who was supposed to be the school’s version of the next Lawrence Taylor, the famed New York Giant linebacker. The coach kept acting out football moves. He mimicked a linebacker pirouetting around a lineman and going in for a sack of the quarterback.

I desperately wanted to shout out “can we take it outside?”

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A deafening rumble

Another reporter was doing a phone interview with a local police chief. Five small mom and pop businesses on the same section of rural back country road had been robbed over the weekend. Police were looking for information from anyone who saw something out-of-the-ordinary. I could hear the policeman say over the phone, “We’ve got ourselves a real live crime spree.”

He put emphasis on “spree” like he was a new sheriff in town ready to clean up the crime-filled streets. I imagined police cars with flashing blue and red lights and blaring sirens, racing up the valley to get to the scene of the crimes. I saw a young Barney Fife breaking open the case and putting a crime syndicate behind bars.

And the news editor was sitting a few spots away from me with another reporter reading over her story. The editor kept stopping to ask questions about specific elements of the story. Finally, the assistant to the publisher and the guy in charge of printing operations were in a deep conversation at the front of the office. They had blueprints in their hands and were talking about changes to the building that needed to happen to make way for a new press. The Editorial or Advertising Departments were going to have to give up some of their space.

For the pièce de résistance, I half expected to see a spotlight and a ringmaster with a black top hat and red coat and tails, come out of an inner office to welcome everyone to the show. “Come one, come all, and prepare to be amazed by our fantastic sights.”

Welcome to the Greatest Show on Earth!

I chuckled to myself, but it was a nervous laugh.

I was running behind schedule in filing my story for the next day’s paper. I had just gotten back from attending a borough council meeting where council members had gotten into a heated discussion on a proposed 10 percent budget hike. I was writing about what the tax increase would mean for residents — both the positives and negatives. The story was supposed to lead the front page of the paper. My editor, of course, wanted me to crank the story out as fast as possible.

Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t focus. Every time I thought I was on a roll, I stumbled. It was a challenge to put the tax increase in common everyday terms that everyone would understand. Heck, I was just trying to understand the increase myself. I would’ve given my right arm for five minutes of peace and calm.

At one point, I even raised my arms back and forth like I was trying to hail an oncoming taxi or car to catch the sports editor’s attention to ask for some “inside voices.” It seemed to work momentarily, but within a few minutes the coach and editor were back up to a dull roar. The rumble in the building seemed ready to rip the roof off the place. I swear I even heard a distant calliope organ — a 19th-century musical instrument. It creates sounds by forcing compressed air through large whistles. You hear calliope music often at carnivals and circuses.

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Death defying acts

I temporarily closed my eyes. I could see the ringmaster again standing on a crate in the office and shouting as loudly as he could: “Behold daring acrobats defying gravity, fearless artists confronting danger, and hilarious clowns guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.”

I imagined elephant and lion tamers, trapeze and aerial artists, acrobats, fire eating and sword swallowing performers, quick change performers, and clowns getting ready in the cubicle next to me. When I open my eyes though, I found my editor looking squarely at me. A deadline was a deadline. And I needed to get moving. As soon I was done, I knew he’d set aside his other work and would start editing my piece. However, knowing all this, just put more pressure on me.

In my mind’s eye, I saw the parade of jugglers and magicians waiting in the wings. But I had enough. I made a few more additions to my story and then hit send.

I’m not sure how, but I miraculously found my way to the finish line. It certainly wasn’t my best work. But at least the story got the general gist across. It helped educate the public on the key points of the budget hike. I compared the piece to a clown whose act is lame, but is still funny in its own little way.

The story went automatically to the editor for his edit and review. And I had made it to intermission. It was time to grab some popcorn before the start of the second half of the show.

The show must go on!

Concentration is a tricky thing. Many things — including mindfulness, training and repetition, and healthy lifestyle — go into improving the mental attention we put into a task. When psychologists talk about concentration, they focus often on eliminating distractions. Of course, there was little I could do about the newsroom. It was always going to be a noisy, crazy place and this was back in the day before noise-canceling headphones.

I knew I couldn’t do much about the newsroom. But, I could still take other steps. Most importantly, I would have to build up my resistance.

Send in the clowns

After I struggled through the story, I went back to Clown School. Or at least my own version of Clown Concentration School. Here’s some of the steps I took that still help me today:

• Created a routine. I created a writing routine. If nothing else, I trained my brain to treat my writing time with respect. Writing time was important. It wasn’t frivolous. It was important to focus and get my thoughts out on paper or in a file.
• Fought fire with fire. I placed a small fan at my desk. It wasn’t perfect. But the constant spinning of the fan helped drown out many of the conversations and noises around me. I focused on my thoughts and on the predictable nature of the white noise. I let the distractions happening around me go by the wayside.
• Trained my focus. I re-framed interruptions as challenges. How quickly could I get back into the story I was working on? How quickly could I go from sitting down at my desk to cranking out my story? It became a chess game. I needed to use intelligence and mental strength to fight interruptions and anything that would keep me from my goal.
• Communicated boundaries. I limited my time goofing off at my desk. I switched the direction of my seat so I wasn’t facing where most of the noise seemed to be coming. If someone saw me at my desk, I was there generally to write. It gave out a subtle message that I was busy.

Like the lions and the elephant, I needed lots and lots of training.

In time, I got used to the craziness of the newsroom-circus life. I even got used to the high school coach. I never wanted to run away to join the circus. However, I gained a newfound respect for the ringmaster and all the circus performers, clowns, magicians, trainers, and stagehands.

I’ve become so good at ignoring noise when I’m writing that I had to laugh this week when I sat down to write and had to get up to check out the garbage truck making a racket on my street. In one crazy second, I thought the circus and the ringmaster were making a return, bringing the Big Top to town.

I was just dreaming, but it was still a nice dream.