I used to think learning was supposed to be quiet.
Neat. Orderly. Predictable.

But in my world, it never sounded that way.

It sounded like pencil scratches in the margins of a notebook, screws rattling on a garage floor, the click of a camera shutter, the uneven notes of a song I hadn’t yet learned how to play correctly.

While other people memorized answers, I chased patterns.
While they followed instructions, I tested them—bending, breaking, rebuilding.

Long before I understood what kind of learner I was, I understood this:
my mind was never silent when it was learning.

I’ve always been a visual learner, though I didn’t have the words for it back then.
I just knew that explanations never quite landed unless I could see them—drawn in chalk, traced in the air, sketched in the margins of something I wasn’t supposed to be paying attention to.

I learned early that my hands understood things before my mouth ever did.

While other kids memorized, I dismantled.
Radios. Toys. Old gadgets that had already lived their lives.

I wasn’t trying to break them.
I was trying to understand them.

I doodled constantly. Not the kind of doodles you frame, but the kind that grow like vines along the edges of notebooks—arrows, shapes, half-formed ideas, faces that never quite looked like anyone real.

For a while, I kept them.
Then, somewhere along the way, I started throwing them out.

Now I doodle and let them go.
They’ve become the noise of learning—the static before clarity, the clutter before meaning.
I don’t need to keep them anymore.

They were never the destination.
They were the map.

Photography came later. I started taking pictures not because I wanted to be a photographer, but because I was afraid of forgetting. Somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn’t collecting photos—I was collecting stories hiding in the quiet, overlooked moments of everyday life.

Light hitting a wall just right.
A shadow stretching across a sidewalk in Calexico heat.
A moment that felt ordinary to everyone else but impossible to explain to myself.

So I collected moments the only way I knew how—through a lens.
I still do.

And then there was music.

In high school, it was band—marching rhythms, rehearsals, and the discipline of staying in time.

These days, it’s mariachi—less about perfection, more about expression.

I wouldn’t say I play mariachi music.
That would imply a level of mastery I’ve never claimed.

I dabble.
I experiment.
I make sounds that shouldn’t quite work together—and somehow do.

To some people, it probably sounds like noise.
To me, it’s the opposite.

It’s structure hiding inside chaos.
It’s feeling translated into vibration.
It’s proof that not all learning comes from silence.

I’ve come to realize that I don’t move through the world the way most people do.
I don’t just look—I inspect.
I don’t just listen—I test.
I don’t just learn—I rebuild what I’m taught into something that makes sense to me.

I see the world with a different set of eyes.
Not better. Not worse.

Just mine.

I’ve been on this rock for fifty-five years.

I’ve seen patterns repeat themselves—my own and everyone else’s.
I’ve watched people try to understand the world, try to understand each other, try to understand themselves.

The outcomes are what you’d expect.
Sadness. Exhilaration. Wonder.
The simplest joys and the deepest heartbreaks.
The complexities of life tangled quietly into the everyday.

Wow. That got philosophical fast.

Sorry about that—I didn’t mean to go that deep.

The coffee clearly isn’t doing its job this morning.

I may need to speak to management about that.

I grew up knowing I was different. That I learned differently, despite everyone’s best efforts to fit me into a mold that was never designed for me.

Now, as an educator, I see pieces of myself in my students.
Not always in my colleagues—but definitely in the kids who doodle in the margins, who ask sideways questions, who learn loudly in a world that prefers quiet.

And when I see them, I recognize the sound immediately.

It’s the noise of learning.

There’s more waiting at https://xinkblotz.com. Telling stories, sharing thoughts, and drinking coffee. A blend of fiction, reflection, and whatever’s brewing – one post at a time.