Time is an illusion

The timekeepers in my life are rather erratic. My computer and my iPhone have the same time as each other and come closest to matching the ABC time pips. My other horological devices are more varied. The video recorder is still running on daylight savings time and so is an hour ahead. My bike trip computer probably wasn’t on summer time, but as it runs fast it is now about half an hour out. My car radio is about 15 minutes out for a similar reason. My clock radio and alarm clock (both of which play an important role in waking me up) are a few minutes fast. My watch is the chronometer to which I refer most, and it runs a little fast, too. I have let it drift ahead, because I find it useful to have some leeway for appointments, but since it is now 7 minutes out, the arithmetic is getting a little tedious when I want to know the actual time (and I know it’s confusing for people who sneak a glance at it).

Time, as Douglas Adams once wrote, is an illusion. I could fix all of these clocks, but I just haven’t found the impetus to bother. Instead, my mind just keeps track of the correction factors (more or less … given the state of my mind!). My body, on the other hand, seems perfectly capable of keeping track of the passage of time, as evidenced by the physical changes that suggest that time’s effects are not illusory even if time itself might be. Every so often I notice an extra creak, a new twinge, a delay in recovery … just little things that remind me that I am not a teenager any more … and make me wonder when did that happen?!

What is particularly temporally disturbing, however, is the fact that — fast clocks notwithstanding — the years seem to be passing into history with ever increasing rapidity.

In fact, today marks the first blogiversary for “Off into the sunset …”.

I find it hard to believe that it has been a year since I wrote the first entry (I don’t recommend following the link; it wasn’t a very exciting entry!). A great deal has happened in that time, including my study leave visits to Tasmania and Oxford. In fact, my main reason for starting the blog was to keep my friends and family informed of my activities while I was away. It is now five months since I returned, and yet I’ve kept blogging, although more sporadically and with perhaps less spectacle than before.

I’m still not entirely sure why I keep blogging. It can be a bit of a time-consuming distraction (and probably contributes to the tempus fugit experience), but I enjoy the writing process. I am egocentric enough to hope there’s an audience that might appreciate — in some sense — what I produce, and I know I write with an awareness of possible readers; but, in fact, I mostly do it for me.

So, in a year’s time, will I still be here? I hope so. Older, creakier, maybe wiser, possibly crankier, and, hopefully, with some interesting blog entries added to the collection.