You Will Find Me on the Space-Time Continuum

I am writing curriculum which will be used by employees in India. It's a challenging project which, among other things, requires a degree of cultural sensitivity. The person I'm working with on this project is based in New Jersey. That is also a different culture.

Meanwhile, I have a weekly conference call with people in Melbourne (Australia), Montreal, and Boston. This call is scheduled for 8:00 a.m. Australian time (AU Eastern), which is 4:00 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time, and for me in the Rocky Mountain region, 2:00 p.m. Oh yes, in Australia, it's the next day. So my meeting is Thursday but the same meeting in Melbourne is on Friday. Just to keep it interesting, last week, while not fully paying attention to this world-wide conference call, I was texting Clyde who was in Tel Aviv, Israel.

It's hard to be centered when you have to spend your day zipping (virtually) around the world and back again. Keeping track of the time zones alone is dizzying.

Even when I don't leave metro Denver, I'm conscious of times and places which exist in exhausting 24 hour simultaneousness.

I doubt if even Albert Einstein could map my existence on the space-time continuum without really getting confused. Did he ever have a conference call with someone who is already living in tomorrow morning?

No wonder people feel lost these days.

I have coworkers in Tempe, Arizona. Twice a year, I have to change my clocks forward or backward for daylight savings time, while in Arizona, the time stays the same. For this reason, scheduling a phone meeting with someone in Arizona is extra tricky.

I can barely sleep at night knowing that my curriculum might be used on the other side of the world at that very minute.

If it can't be done on the phone, I can physically be almost anywhere on Earth in less than 24 hours.  As a matter of fact, Clyde and I will be visiting Rio de Janeiro, Brazil this month. It's quite a contrast from people who 300 years ago could easily go their whole lives without leaving a 10 mile radius of where they were born. You could send a letter to, say, India, but it would take months to get there.

Just to confuse things more, usually when I travel to another continent, like Europe or Asia, I have to adjust to opposing time zones. Day at home is usually night where I'm going and vice-versa. But going to Brazil doesn't present much more of a time change than travelling to the U.S. east coast. It's still confusing, however, because the seasons are opposite. While we're cooling down here, their summer is heating up. I may not have jet lag in Rio, but I won't know what month it is.

I know. This fits into the category of "first world problems." Everyone should have to suffer my trials.

It's really quite amazing when you think about it. Technology opens our world in many ways. What a remarkable time we live in. But I can't help but think that maybe 300 years ago, people slept a little better.