Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.
How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.
If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 2nd) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.
This was originally posted on my old blog on October 2, 2013.
What time is it?
In addition to my watch, there are ten timekeeping devices (aka, clocks) in my house. TEN! And except for one, they’re all digital time displays. Where are these timekeeping devices?
- Bedroom alarm
- Coffee maker
- Oven
- Microwave
- Cable box
- iPhone
- iPad
- Laptop
- Printer
- Desk clock (analog face)
I’m not obsessed with knowing precisely what time it is. However, I do participate in a lot of conference calls and online meetings for my job, and I like being prompt for those calls/meetings, since others could be affected by my tardiness.
So this morning, when I looked at the clock that sits on my desk and saw that it was three minutes past the hour, I thought to myself, “Shit, I’m late for the call.” Then I looked at my watch, which told me it was just on the hour. I picked up my iPhone, which read one-minute past the hour, as did my iPad and laptop.
Now I’m not saying that I’m easily distracted, but instead of placing the call that I may or may not have already been late for, I decided that I needed to check out all of the other clocks in my place. I ran to the bedroom and checked my alarm clock. I went to the kitchen and looked at the times displayed on the coffee maker, the oven, and the microwave. I checked the time on my cable box and on my printer.
In my kitchen alone, the coffee maker, oven, and microwave displayed three different times, each different from the others by a minute. Three different times displayed on three clocks within 10 feet of one another, for crissake!
The time displayed on my cable box showed one minute later than any of the three clocks in the kitchen. In all, the variation among all of the 11 timepieces — the ten clocks and my watch — was four minutes from slowest to fastest. Fascinating, right?
By the time I finished this truly pointless and somewhat irrational exercise, I was ten minutes late for my call…or maybe only six minutes late. I can’t be certain. But even after I got on the call and apologized to the others for my tardiness, I couldn’t really concentrate on whatever it was that the call concerned.
The only thing that was going through my mind, to the exclusion of everything else, was that old song by the band Chicago: “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?”
And then it struck me. Does anybody really care?
Photo credit: Jon Tyson at unsplash.
This, That, and the Other 