Time, an Unlikely Ally, Maybe.

Time has come and gone, and remains. It consumes my life. Time marches slowly, and waits for no one. Why am I so obsessed with time? It grips me in its cold, clammy minute, second and hour hands. It crushes me under the weight of my own expectations. Time is my enemy, my friend, a ghost that haunts my waking minutes and my sleep.

If I leave the house without a watch I am a wreck. Normally it is a constant accessory, and if it lays lonely on the counter after my departure it is not unusual for me to turn around and go back. "My precious."

Once, at a basketball tournament a guy asks if I have a cell phone. "Yes, why?" He wanted to know what time it was. "I have a watch. In fact I have several. Today I am wearing this lovely little number, with a calendar, a stop watch, a count down timer, and multiple time zones. Would you like to see pictures of my other watches?"

"No, I just want to know what time it is?"

"Oh, it is a quarter after one, here, would you like to know what time it is in Beijing? The relative humidity?"

He walked away without saying anything.

Recently, I got a fitbit. It is a watch that counts my steps, measures my heart rate, and other stuff. But, it tells time, hooray! Unfortunately, it leaves me in a terrible dilemma. I don't want to not get credit for the steps I take and the stairs I climb, but I want to wear my other watches too.

I am a man in distress. I am adrift in a sea of minutes, untethered from the seconds, unsure of the barometric pressure, or the meal my brethren in Bangkok are preparing. Damn the muse that bought me the fitbit.

This picture is only for representative purposes.
I don't really have an Apple Watch, thank God,
that would make things worse