Time fascinates me.
When I was in college in the 60's, I used Einstein's theories of relativity and curved space to "prove" that God created the Earth in seven equi-distant time periods which came to be known as "days" but to Him were much longer than 24 hours. My Investigations into Religion professor gave me an A- but noted he was not pleased with the way I twisted the reality of Creation, I thought Albert would have been proud of me!
As a classroom teacher, I relished some classes because the 55 minutes sped by while I bemoaned others because that same 55 minutes seemed to take five hours!
A multi-state car drive with no radio, working CD or tape player is Hell! The miles just crawl by. Drop a book-on-tape into the experience, and I have dawdled the last few miles so I can hear the end of the book!
Retirement has brought additional evidence of the elasticity (relativity?) of time. I spent four decades getting up at Zero Dark Thirty to be awake and alert enough to mold the minds of teenagers. I loved my profession and seldom started the day in a wish-I-were-somewhere-else mood, but I never had enough minutes to accomplish all I wanted to in a day. I was always grading, planning, meeting, or lecturing. Lecturing could never be postponed. Faculty meetings were demonstrations of multi-tasking (and principal-eye avoidance) as I sat in the back and graded while speakers droned. Planning was fun and inspiring as I challenged myself to repeat only a few lessons each year, devising fresh approaches to traditional topics is one of my talents. (If you want to know how to use rocks and astrology to give literary character analysis a boost, let me know.). Even though it was my favorite paperwork, planning just devoured hours, never mind minutes. But the real educational time-hog was grading! I used to keep a supply of multicolored pens on hand just so I could look at different ink colors every so often in an effort to make the task of commenting on usage and writing less arduous. I wish I had bought stock in the Bic pen company when I first began teaching!!
Once I retired, I anticipated having all the time in the world to explore new vistas and take new journeys. Ah, not quite! I DO have more minutes, but I am not sure where they go. I look up from a task and think, "What!!?? How could it possibly be THAT time? I just started this." Things seem to take longer (yes, thank you, I know I am older!), but where did the time go? Letreze and I have wondered how we stayed sane while working full time, since we barely seem able to keep our heads above water with our retirement time table! One aspect of retirement-time is sleep! I am finally getting all the hours medical professionals urge for a healthy body. Who knew sleep could be addictive? But, Wow, does getting eight hours really cut into a day!
Perhaps it's as simple as retirement offers options, and those options require choosing which requires decision-making which requires cogitation. All of which take time.
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