ImPerceptibility

Posts Tagged ‘time’

The thing is, I hate being late. When I find myself running behind it causes me a lot of anxiety and sometimes mild panic. I don’t like to make people wait for me. It doesn’t bother me in the least if I have to wait for other people. I just can’t stand it when I am late, even just a few minutes.

I also serve dinner every night at 6:30, give or take 10 minutes. I’m not sure why I feel the need to serve dinner at that time every night, but I do. I don’t even think my family knows that dinner is at 6:30. They just show up in the dining room when I yell, Dinner! But I go to great lengths to make sure everything is scheduled to be done precisely at 6:30. Go figure.

You’d think I have some weird time obsession but I don’t. If no one is expecting me and it isn’t dinner time, time is irrelevant to me. I don’t own a watch and I haven’t owned one in about 20 years. I don’t have an alarm clock on my bedside table. I get up when the kids wake me up. I use my cell phone if I feel the need to know the time, but I only feel the need to know the time when I need to be somewhere. Otherwise I don’t care.

I’ve always been like this to some extent. In my past life (my life before kids) I worked as a system administrator for a very large computer lab. Every once in awhile I’d sit down in front of a computer first thing in the morning and start working. After what seemed like an hour to me, I’d look up and realize everyone else was leaving for the day. I may be timeatically challenged.

People sometimes laugh at me when I ask them what day it is. They’ll tell me the date and I’ll say, No, is it Wednesday or Friday? I’m not a scatterbrain. I just divide my days into weekdays and weekends. A weekend is any day that MyHusband is home. It works for me most of the time.

I’ve tried planners books and complex calendar systems. I’ve tried to organized my days into neat little blocks of time. I’ve tried to keep track of things in a linear fashion but I end up spending more time planning on doing things than actually doing things. It doesn’t work out for me.

I guess I’m okay. I get a lot done. I am rarely late for an appointment. I just don’t understand time. I don’t understand schedules.  If I had to go grocery shopping every Monday at 11 am I’d go insane.  I don’t like living my life in blocks of time pre-planned in a date book. Sometimes I wish I did. Life would be easier, I think. I’m just not linear and sometimes I run around in circles. I’m okay with that. Most of the time.

How about you?