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Archives

18 April 2005

Time Off

Since I stopped wearing a watch, I'm learning how to be on time.

I haven’t worn a watch for at least six months. This might come as a surprise to my friends who probably assumed based on my arrival times that I never had one in the first place. Most of them have started asking me to meet them for movies 20 minutes early, so when I get there 15 minutes late, we still have time to buy popcorn.

I’ve had this watch since 8th grade. I bought it with allowance at Eddie Bauer for $45 and it served me well ever since. It was never stylish, so it never went out of style. Just a brown leather band, simple silver watch and an easy-to-read face. The hands looked like they were supposed to glow in the dark, but they didn’t.

Over my post-pubescent years, this watch was broken or lost many times, but I always fixed it or found it eventually. Sometimes it sat for months on my dresser with a broken battery, and it lasted a good year and a half with the second hand floating around inside, until it got stuck underneath the minute hand and the whole operation shut down.

This time when it stopped, I never got around to fixing it. I wore it on my wrist for a few days after it stopped as a reminder to stop by the jewelers on my way home, but I never made it and eventually I took it off and put it in a drawer. It’s probably just a dead battery, but I’m getting used to going without it anyway.

If I really need to know what time it is, I just have to reach in my pocket and check my cell phone. But I check it compulsively every few minutes for no reason as I had a habit of doing before. It never did me any good anyway, it just gave me false hope. If I had an appointment coming up I always misjudged the time I had left and ended up overshooting the target time and being late anyway.

I know what you’re thinking, I’m about to get into all that cliché hippy mumbo-jumbo about how now that I don’t have a watch I’m not a slave to time because I’ve realized that there IS no time and I’m FREE! But it’s not like that at all. I’m not free from anything. I still have appointments and meetings and I’m still late to most of them. Later, if possible. How am I supposed to be on time everywhere? I don’t even have a watch.

One thing I have realized is that I have a terrible intuitive sense of time as its passing. I’m always overestimating the time I have left (and underestimating the time I’ve spent on something). I have terrible orientation skills in time, just like I have terrible orientation skills in physical space.

Even in a familiar city, more often than not I need a map. Throw me in an unfamiliar city, or an unfamiliar neighborhood in a familiar city and I panic. I can’t get my bearings and just “wing it”. I need a map. I consider it a disability. I require assistive devices—maps—to perform the necessary human function of navigation. Even with a map I still get lost, but I don’t panic.

Without a chronological map as a crutch, I’m learning (slowly) to internalize the passing of time the way some people do with a sense of direction. I’m learning what an hour feels like (more or less) in different contexts. Waiting requires one kind of intuitive math, working requires another conversion altogether.

I don’t have it down yet, and I may never be what you might call punctual, but there’s hope. This weekend I even sat down in a movie theater before the previews started.

Maybe someday I’ll drive to Kansas City and not get lost.

Comments

  1. 18 April 2005

    Robert

    Each of the above paragraphs is absolute truth, and yet I identify with but one tendency - the compulsive looking at the watch for no reason. I’ve insulted many a lady by looking at my watch, even though I (usually) don’t want the night to end.

    It’s funny, when I rely on a map, I feel just as handicapped as you do without one. That piece of paper doesn’t tell me anything about the chance encounters with road signs and construction that will force me to make impulse decisions. I just need to do it (whatever it is), then I can read about it and say yeah, that’s right.

    As for the movie last weekend, keep in mind that I’m the one who drove you.

  2. 20 April 2005

    Wilson

    Hey, I didn’t say I could do it on my own.

  3. 20 April 2005

    Daniel

    For years, I would keep my watch set to some arbitrarily fast offset, one I didn’t know exactly but one I knew fairly close. I started with something around 5-7 minutes, and eventually ended up at around 50-55 minutes ahead. The initial impulse was to take advantage of that second or two of reflex, just before I’d made the conversion to mainstream time, when I’d be anxious about being late. As the years passed, I took it as my own province in time.

    Lately, though, since buying my last watch and setting it to mainstream time, I haven’t missed my own private Idaho.

    For the curious, my method never worked. I’m not any later or earlier now than I was over the course of those years. I’m just always late.

  4. 29 April 2005

    Ryan

    I bought a lovely pocket watch a long time ago, thinking that maybe since I don’t like wearing a wristwatch I could at least carry one in my pocket. Alas, I too end up just peeking at my cell phone every few minutes.

    On the other hand, I spend upwards of 12 hours each day planted in front of my Powerbook, so all I have to do is glance in the upper right-hand corner, and behold! the time. Very convenient.

  5. 30 April 2005

    Wilson

    A pocket watch sure sounds like a classy accessory, but the last thing I need is another thing in my pocket. I’d have to start wearing vests so I’d have an extra pocket. And smoking a pipe. Ooh and a monocle!

    Or yeah, I could just stay where I am, in front of my Powerbook.

  6. 2 May 2005

    Robert

    Ryan Kuhlman, former keeper of a pocket watch, cell phones, etc. Former wearer of vests.

    And yes, his father smoked a pipe.