Most people discover music when they are kids, maybe pre-teenagers at the latest. You define a few band and genre preferences that will embarrass you several years down the line, then you hone your musical style as you move through life and experience your first heartache, your second heartache, a friend’s betrayal, your first kiss, moving away from home — the usual tragedies that are part of getting older.

Now when I think back to my two years in New York, it is all sound. Year 1 is made up of all of the noise from other people, sounds that I had no control over, that had me breaking out in hives and nearly in a fetal position in the shower, wondering what was wrong with me. The second year is filled with my own noise: not just music, but podcasts, stand-up comedy routines and audiobooks.

I remember the day after I bought my new headphones , when I first looked over at two people on the subway engaged in a very animated and seemingly loud conversation. All I could hear was Nora Ephron narrating one of her most hilarious essays in my ear.

It was almost euphoric for me in that moment to realize that I could exist in this confined space with other strangers but so easily escape them at the same time; I didn’t have to listen to their gossip, or their music, or their coughing, or their kid.

My second year in New York was full of other little moments that are now memorable and precious to me because of the noise, not in spite of it: the nights I made dinner while listening to the latest episodes of “Serial” or “Criminal”; that one Arcade Fire song I played on repeat the entire way home from work one day (all one and a half hours of my commute); the night I fell asleep listening to Françoise Hardy and woke up tangled in my Apple earbuds.

There was the long walk around Central Park spent listening to a podcast about the Brock Turner case (both I and the women on the podcast were nearly hysterical); that time I missed my subway stop because I was laughing so hard at Bill Bryson’s audiobook about Australia, and then instead of getting back on the subway I walked the two miles home so that I could finish listening (and laughing) to the whole thing.