Let Us All Bow Down to the Master Clock

One smooth spot of Arizona living is the LACK of monkeying with the clock.  Because of the climate and the perverseness of people who choose to live in the desert, we do not observe daylight savings time.  As the human race, we've gone from clocks, as our ultimate luxury possession to being our slave masters.  Just because we've shed our wrist watches in favor of our mobile phones doesn't mean we've broken our bonds of servitude to the time keeper.

One of the joys of retirement is the sliver of freedom I enjoy from the tyranny of the clock.  A true luxury is being able to lay in bed when I wake up, and even better, to be able to simply lay there contemplating the ceiling rather than cataloging all my chores of the day, and what time they have to be done. 

Time management is something we practice whenever we have a project, but it's not a relentless daily necessity as it is in the non-geezer world.  A friend sent me a picture of her childrens' Halloween costumes, and my first thought was, "I wonder when she had time to make those?"  No wonder so many women step back or down in the working world when they are responsible for small children. In my day (a true geezer phrase is there ever was one), I didn't know a single father who took on the responsibility of Halloween beyond following kids around during the actual event eating their candy, or if you lived in NOLA,  drinking a Dixie long neck.

Now 'being at work' is being redefined by constant connectivity, and I initially thought the redefinition would actually mean more flexibility for working parents, but it really means EXTENSION of work time.  "Honey, I just need 20 minutes to clear my email."  "If I can work uninterrupted here in the bedroom for an hour without the kids banging into the room every 10 minutes, I can really free up tomorrow when I'll  be slammed."  "Hello, you're working NOW?"  "Just 15 more minutes."  See, how the clock has become even more controlling than when we started work at 8 and left at 5?  The tag line from some commercial says it best, "When did it become a luxury to leave work on time?"  The operative words in that sentence being 'leave' and 'time'.

So, today, you are being offered the carrot - an extra hour.  Isn't that swell?  I can remember being thrilled and waiting to change the clocks until the next morning.  Forget 2:00 am.  It was as if I got to stick it to those relentlessly marching numbers by turning them back.   Well, the piper is just around the corner.  First, it's going to arrive tonight when you realize it's already dark!  Second, next spring the clock has jet lag in your own home planned just for you....  You're just a slave.  Clocks rule!  And not always in a good way.