If you ever lived out in the country or anywhere near water, you know what it’s like when the sun goes down on cool October nights. Stand at the top of a hill and you can see the cold settle into the streams and valleys, driving the mist up out of them.

I remember a night like that when I was eleven, standing in the wet grass by the edge of a gravel drive, watching the mist come crawling up the hill from a pond. It settled around my feet like a litter of puppies and played at the holes in my sneakers. Bullfrogs croaked in the pond below the mist – a sound I usually liked, but not that night.

I needed to hear a car coming down Pheasant Road, a very specific car, because only that one would bring good news. The frogs were making too much noise for me to hear the ticka, ticka, tick of the car I hoped was coming my way, so I picked up three rocks and chucked them into the mist. Two fell short, but the third hit the water and everything went quiet. One mile off, I could hear a car. Ticka, ticka, tick.

Same as my world, yours has the noise you need and the noise you don’t. Some days you want to hear the social croaking of family and friends. Some days you need to toss a rock in their pond. A little silence every now and then lets you listen for the good or bad coming your way. In that quiet you might also find your own voice that’s been swallowed by the din.

So follow blogs like mine when the sound of them does you good; shut us bullfrogs up when you need to listen for something else. Good and bad will come, but if you listen well, you’ll be ready for anything.