I used to live by the clock. First, there was school — mine — to get to. Papers to write, deadlines to meet, exams to study for and hopefully, pass. Whoosh and I’m racing to get my son ready for school on time, ready for the school bus. Then me to the car for the long commute and watching the clock at work so I’d know when it was time to make that long drive back the other way.
White Rabbit: “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!”
After I no long had an office job, I nonetheless wore a watch for some years. It felt odd to not wear one. Then, one day, my watch-wearing-wrist developed an itchy rash. It turned out — no kidding — there’s such thing as an allergy to wrist watches. It comes from wearing a watch for a lot of years and one day, the skin on your wrist rebels. I like to think of it as The Universe sending a message.
I do not wear a watch, these days, but I don’t need one. These days, there is a clock everywhere. On the telephone, cable box, and every item in the kitchen. We have clocks in the car, on the walls, in the halls, in the malls.
Beeping, chirping, ticking and occasionally bonging or ringing, clocks speak to our obsession with time — and our need to be forever busy and in a hurry. Many people are, apparently, proud of how busy they are and look at you with pity because you aren’t. I think they’ve got it backwards.
I am not in a hurry. I am occasionally busy, but I get un-busy as soon as I can. Not living by the clock is a great gift.
I’ve officially clocked out. It turns out, there is life after clocks.
WELCOME TO 2023. LET’S SHARE. 
TIMING OUT 
SHARING MY WHAT? 
THE CLOCK TOLLS, BUT SOMETIMES NOT SO MUCH 
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
Still wear my watch, but rarely have to give it a glance. Ah, retirement… 🙂
LikeLike
I really do have an allergy. I actually CAN’T wear a watch. It’s kind of funny really. I know one other woman who has the same allergy. We are the same age. I think it may be that we are allergic to being on a schedule 🙂
LikeLike
I never wear a watch at home, and I don’t set an alarm unless I ‘really’ have to get up at a certain time. It is one of the best things about retirement and is right up there with no conference calls and no meetings. 🙂
LikeLike
Now most of the clocks we see are ultimately calibrated by the big atomic clock located in a mountain somewhere. If the government ever wanted to do a sociology study (Or just pull a huge prank), they should slowly set it 15 minutes fast and see if anyone notices when their clocks catch up with it…
LikeLike
Or keep changing it back and forth, removing half an hour here, adding fifteen minutes there … and then wait for the world to lose its collective mind.
What a great idea. If I could hack the clock, I’d do it just to see what happens.
LikeLike
If only they had a clock that showed what day and year it is!!!
LikeLike
I think I do. We call it a calendar 🙂 We have one in the kitchen and another in the back office. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure we’d never know what day it was.
LikeLike
But you still have to figure out which of the days on the calendar it is. Good thing there are computers in this world or I’d never know what day it is.
LikeLike
Oh, I put EVERYTHING into the computer calendar because it will propagate to my phone and Kindle and something will beep or clang or whistle or something to alert me that something is happening. I frequently don’t know what day of the week it is, though because of blogging, I usually know the day of the month. I use the Google calendar and I set up email and popup and sound alerts. Otherwise, I’d miss everything. Oh, and my bills are all set to pay automatically. Phew.
LikeLike
I only have to pay my cell phone, I I just give them an amount equal to several months ahead so I don’t have to remember so often. But, I haven’t figured out how to sync my computer and iPhone and would you believe, Ididn’t have a spare hour in the three weeks I was gone to go to a Mac place.
LikeLike
If you use the same calendar application on your computer and phone, they will do it all by themselves. Google is easy because it’ll run on pretty much anything and any platform. You just enter the information on your computer and when you look at the calendar on your phone or tablet (if you have one), it’ll have the same data. You can’t add NEW data on the phone, but anything you’ve added elsewhere will automatically update. Even Garry can do it, so I’m pretty sure so can you. Maybe you’re trying too hard.
LikeLike
Call me crazy, but I still set my alarm clock in the morning for 7.30, not that I actually get up at 7.30, but it gives me a clue that I survived the night and can prepare myself for the daily chores. Somehow I have to have some sort of orgnisation and not just lay around all day. I need chores, although I can now choose them and do not have to do them. Mr. Swiss is always up before me, but I got to bed before him. My clock is my iPhone next to my bed, I do not need anything else. It also serves as a light during the night when I make my way to that place where most of us go in the middle of the night. 🙂
LikeLike
I actually have a clock radio on the headboard over my bed. It’s also a CD player, so it has a pretty good range of usefulness.
We have dogs so we have to get up, give them a biscuit and remind them they have to go out and take care of business even if it’s raining or snowing. They don’t agree, but they do it anyway. Garry does the early shift around 6am then goes back to bed and doesn’t reappear until noon. I get up around 10ish because if I sleep later, they get noisy and remind me I’m failing in my responsibilities. It’s like having little furry toddlers that never grow up, but sadly, grow old.
LikeLike
these are independent of anything but two hands that whiz around, and you can set them anyway you want. the only difference is, the battery powers them not the power grid. Which I like. They also take so little power to run that our old batteries from different toys (double AA) once theyve used up their toy life will power one of these for a year.
I found if I decide to take a nap, Ill say, 2:30 and wake up at 2:30. Scary. If I tell myself gotta be up by 4 AM i rarely miss.
It is kinda neat the way we can set our own clocks to match the outside clocks…
LikeLike
I used to be able to do that, but these days I’m pretty much lost in space. Garry was really amazing at it. To the minute. Now? I have to drag him out of bed like a teenager.
LikeLike
once my husband retired we no longer needed alarm clocks, and I wake before dawn anyway. I set my own internal alarm for those days when I have to get up earlier than that. Thank god, that’s rare. I dont even use the microwave clock, since every time the power burps it has to be reset.
I use clocks now to time things in the oven, or “he should have been back by now” or when the company will be here. I never wore a wristwatch, they just don’t work on me. No idea why. I toyed with the idea of a FitBit for about ten minutes and then realized how goofy they are. And the ads for them are totally offputting.
The clocks we have are digital but with the tick built in, and they hang on the wall. The test is, can I tolerate the tick? And being battery run, they keep better time than any clock or watch i’ve ever seen. They just do not lose time.
Our time spans are larger now, days and weeks, seasons. And going clockless is a definite gift.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We used to be able to set mental clocks for everything. Garry had an absolutely perfect record of knowing when it was time to get up for whatever, but over the 15 years since he retired, he has lost it … and so have I (mostly). So on those rare times when we actually have to be someplace at a specific time — and early — like an airport, I used the alarm in my Kindle. I have two alarm clocks, but I think the batteries died a few years ago and I never got around to replacing them.
I have a lot of flashing digital clock for the same reason you don’t set them, except I can’t turn these off, so they just flash forever. But having to keep resetting them is so annoying, I’ve given it up.
Analog refers only to the style of the clock face. If it looks sort of like Big Ben, it’s analog, even if it gets its time corrections from the atomic clock. Everyone should be able to read an old fashioned clock in case they ever travel to an old European city and feel like idiots because they can’t read the clock in the tower 🙂
LikeLike