Let’s Do the Time Warp Again

I’ve never seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Not in a theater, or streaming. I’ve tried once or twice. Never got past the first 15 minutes.

I am a traitor to my generation.

I have lived an out-of-synch life.

Yet over the past three years, everyone has come to know temporal disorientation. I remember my company sent us home from the office on March 16, 2020. But I can’t remember whether the polar vortex was last winter or longer ago. I’m stunned when I reorder something on Amazon and discover that I last purchased it six years ago. What?

Wasn’t it just a few months ago that I put together a playlist of Irish music on Spotify? Now I’m doing that again (because I lost all my playlists when I left Spotify in a huff when everyone else left in a huff and now that I’m back I have to rebuild them all again.)

The red fox came back to lounge in my backyard this week. Didn’t I just write about that? Nope. I wrote about that over two years ago.

Last week I had a day filled with slowly rising anxiety. WTF? Was it that I had received the drafts of updated and restated estate planning documents that made me feel grim? I reminded myself that I was OK, making progress, moving forward, accomplishing stuff, ticking off items on the checklist. Hell, I already did my taxes!

But what about the sweaters that need darning (not that I know how to darn, but YouTube, right?). What about the closets that need shoveling out and my unfulfilled yearning for furniture I can’t afford to complete my vision for my house? What about all the places I haven’t been yet and the new man I’ve yet to meet?

The anxiety was a brewing panic about time. My innards were gripped with a creeping fear that I’m running out of time.

I toil 40 hours a week at my company’s loaner laptop (I use my own for personal stuff). I love my job. I’m lucky. If I work hard, I can work from home until I receive my Medicare card (God and the Senate willing).

I’ve known people who retired, with parties and expressions of deep appreciation, only to drop dead a few days later.

I’m determined not to be one of those people. But I constantly feel a niggling sense of lost opportunity. You can only be told you missed your calling so many times before you realize, yes, you did, dumbass, so what now? It makes me hyper-conscious of how I spend my time.

Spend, as from a limited supply, a dwindling fund, a scarce resource. So I get all busy bee. I clean something every time I take a break. I do some sort of project every weekend, when I should be spending time with Angelic Daughter.

What’s going on here?

I’m starting to understand those legends about old ladies who keep adding on to their houses, thinking somehow if they keep going, they’ll live forever.

I used to define my life’s ambition as living in a finished, furnished house before I die.

Why? You can’t take it with you, Annie.

I think I figured it out. It’s not about accumulating stuff. It’s about creativity. My home is a sort of artwork to me–an expression of imagination. I need that. It’s what keeps me going. I think that’s true for a lot of people, whatever their outlet. It could be coding, car repair, inventing, gardening, knitting, whatever–we all need creativity.

So maybe I sense that the window of creative opportunity is slowly closing. Whatever I’m doing most of the day, I’m persistently plagued with a sense that I should be doing something else.

I’m sure as hell in no position to lose an hour to some idiotic fantasy that “springing ahead” saves energy. It’s been proven that it doesn’t. The only thing daylight saving time serves is, you guessed it, capitalism! With more daylight at the end of the day, people stay out at bars and restaurants longer and use their evenings to buy more stuff! Flying in the face of expert opinions from sleep specialists and statistics on vehicle crashes and productivity losses, some dingbat in Congress has again proposed to make daylight saving time permanent.

NO. Make standard time permanent. The sun will rise and set when it rises and sets, and our circadian rhythms need to synch with that. So can we please fall back in November and leave it that way?

Not a chance. This is ‘Merca, and here, the almighty dollar will always win. In the wise words (and great tunes) of Cyndi Lauper, (preceded by ads HA) money changes everything. Harrumph.

Disgruntled, out-of-synch, I remain,

Your panicky, what-the-hell-am-I-doing-with-what’s-left-of-my-“one-wild-and-precious-life,” but don’t-you-do-it-Annie-you-can’t-afford-to-quit-yet,

Ridiculouswoman