Brian Explains: Time

I have a never-ending series of weird and scary things that I do. One of my abilities is to wake up seconds before my alarm clock goes off. I go hours without looking at the clock and I have managed to time it perfectly a chilling amount of times. My internal clock works overtime even when I am sleeping (reason 1389 why I have a hard time sleeping at night). I play and write music, which might have something to do with my connection to time. I have developed good timing to play music, which translates to a good understanding of timing in life. I don’t usually lose track of time. I own time and it does my bidding. Time is my bitch.

When I was a kid, my cousin was unable to tell time on an analog clock. In case you are in the same club as my cousin, an analog clock is a clock with hands and a face. A grandfather clock and Big Ben are analog clocks. Digital clocks (the only clocks my cousin ever knew) just tell you the time in digital numbers. I prefer an analog clock mainly for doing time math. If something is 6 hours away, it is on the opposite side of the clock. Count up or down from 6 hours and you can count just about any length of time by 3 hour increments. I prefer carrying a cellphone rather than wearing a wristwatch because I don’t need to stare at a clock every few minutes. I look at clocks quite often, but I at least get a rest when I am walking from place to place where I can just rely on my inner clock.

Military time is another helpful mathematical time tracker. 17 minus 8 hours shows that an 8 to 5 day is actually 9 hours out of your life that you will never get back. I don’t always agree with the military (especially their love of early morning hours), but a 24-hour clock makes sense considering there are 24 hours in a day. To convert military time to regular time, you simply subtract 12 hours. I usually think of the time as 2 hours and go to the hour that makes sense. To go from regular time to military time, you add 12 hours (or 2 hours). Consider this paragraph your invitation to be drafted into the armed forces. Before you head off to Canada to avoid the military time draft, just move on to the next paragraph.

My wife and I have been to Europe twice in our lives. Just as I find it hard to sleep much of the time at home, I could not sleep on the plane to Europe or the plane back. We both experienced the jet-lag when we arrived in Europe and when we arrived home. Because of the jet-lag, my concept of time was off from my normal timing. I had bad timing like you would not believe. The change in time threw our whole regular routine into shambles. When time is thrown into chaos, your life is thrown into chaos. Eventually, your timing regulates. The moment you get used to European time, it is time to return to your home time.

I thought it would be appropriate in this last paragraph to discuss late timing. It is one thing to be late for things on your own time, but it is another to be later for things involving someone else. Lateness is an insult to those around you. You are saying that whatever you were supposed to remember was not important enough to involve planning for it. Unless you are 5 years old, you know by now how long it takes you to prepare for going somewhere. Plan ahead and be on time. Before I am late in putting out this article, I will just say that time is easy to master, but hard to control. It gets on my nerves and is the greatest thing I crave (next to money). Learn how to deal with time and you will learn how to deal with life. After all, timing is everything.