Time is a new thing now

Here it is almost Saturday and I have attended but one meeting and no other appointments traveled only 80 miles and still the days wing by in chunks of morning and afternoon unmarred by hours or minutes.

I don’t wear a watch and there is only one easily visible clock in the house so the way we tell time is by the firehouse air horn which blasts at 7 am, noon, 4 pm and 9 pm. I guess this is because a lot of Panamians don’t have watches either and that gives them a general idea of the time.

But also looking at the future in time is different. I used to keep a computer calendar that had appointments and meetings and conferences months in advance and I would fret and get ready for them…..but now…no. Time is a much more immediate thing with no long term consequences. Let me describe it this way. A couple of years ago I crewed on a sailboat crossing from Long Beach to Honolulu. After a couple of days shake down we all got into the routine of standing watches of varying hours every 4-8 hours. So suddenly my life only looked forward to my next watch, the next great meal, and the next time to sleep. Time became a very short term thing that I could focus on because it was only one day large.

It is not so different here in Panama. Linda and I make plans sometimes together, sometimes separately, but most often not more than a week out. And we have learned that a task like going to the store which might have taken 1 ½ hours in the states could be all morning or afternoon, depending on what adventures or friends or traffic jams or special errands that is suddenly remembered. That is all part of the adventure.

I know we have all heard retired folks say that they don’t know how they ever worked because NOW there is so much to do. Well now I know what they are talking about. The days and nights fill up with stuff that never seemed to take so long before. It is now 9:45 pm and I have been up since 6, let in the housekeeper, set up for the painter (who was 3 hours late) gone to a Spanish class, came home for lunch, met with our Spanish tutor, cleaned up after the painter, took the dogs to the beach, washed and tended to a sick dog, put the furniture back in place, had dinner, washed dishes, and watched 30 minutes of TV. I sound like one of the Facebook people who Twitter their every action but the point is none of that stuff seems so significant and yet they all seem to blend together into this thing called life.

I gotta go.