Not a Drill

Greetings, pebble pushers! Last week, we rocked out (a little) and slowed down (a lot) to pay attention to pebbles. If you stopped along your walk or carried a pebble around like a pocket-sized lesson plan, I hope the exercise stimulated your mind and body in equal measure.

This week’s creative nudge does not scrape and whisper underfoot, hoping you might notice it. This week’s creative nudge arrives loudly: BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! Another hint? You know it immediately when it wakes you up at 2 AM. You just might not know where it is coming from…that’s right, it’s a fire alarm.

I am genuinely grateful for the people who decided a fire alarm should be as close to the source of the problem as possible. I like knowing something is standing guard while I sleep. I like that it takes its job seriously. What I don’t like is when it goes off for reasons that feel interpretive. No one wants a vibing fire alarm.

Frankly, I didn’t ask for a low a battery notice either. That once-every-minute reminder that something is failing, but not badly enough to justify urgency—just enough to ruin your peace. If a device can tell me its battery is dying, why can’t it replace the battery itself? We’re told artificial intelligence is changing everything, yet I’m still standing on a chair at 11 p.m., waving a broom handle at the ceiling.

Fire alarms demand attention, but most fire alarm drills look anything but alarming. They’re often slow, social, and strangely cheerful. People reluctantly shuffle outside, chat with coworkers, check the weather, and enjoy a few unscheduled minutes of fresh air. 

An annual fire alarm test is its own quiet holiday. At work you get plenty of advanced notice. In part so that you behave properly and leave the building when it sounds. Is this a drill? Yes. Do we need to go outside? Yes. Do we have to come back inside? Up to you! 

This week, instead of treating the fire alarm as a nuisance or a panic button, let’s give it a few minutes of creative attention—as a reminder, a signal, and a demand to start a (creative) fire.

To tap into this creative source, you don’t need to climb on a chair or vape indoors. You can play a fire alarm sound right from your phone. I’m sure your associates in the co-working space will love it. See how fast you can get out of the building using one or more of these sonic stimulations:

1. Emergency Response Team: Play an alarm sound. Notice how quickly your body reacts. Tight shoulders? Faster heartbeat? Eyes darting around? Sound bypasses logic—take notes. Then some deep breaths.

2. Sounds Like: Play the alarm sound and brainstorm other things it resembles. A truck backing up. A microwave. A judgmental robot. Make a list. Make it silly.

3. Falsely Alarmed: Write about the time an alarm went off when nothing was wrong—or when something was wrong and no one reacted. What did you learn?

4. I’m On the Safety Committee: Step outside for five minutes without any emergency prompting you. Notice how it feels to leave on purpose. This is like the time I stopped smoking but kept up the cigarette breaks. Some of my co-workers never even noticed I quit.

5. That [Beeping] Alarm: If you could redesign the fire alarm sound, what would it be? A song? A voice with a polite but witty request? Describe it, sketch it, or hum it at high volume.

Fire alarms remind us that not all attention is voluntary. Some sounds rob us of our plans, our conversations, and our sleep. They interrupt because interruption is the point. There’s a lot of ego built into a fire alarm…look at me, up here! Keep looking at me until I stop. Which might be never.

But do your best to listen closely. Step outside if you need to. Silence, when it returns, is something you’ve already earned.

This column was written with the help of ChatGPT 5.2, used as a creative collaborator in my ongoing exploration of how humans can stay human in an era of unprecedented technological change.