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.

Nose Hair Signals That the End is Near

It's a delicate operation. One false move and it hurts. A lot. Using tweezers would be worse. I use little tiny scissors which don't take out the whole hair, root and all, but merely trim it down so I have to do it again in a few days. 

Lately, I've noticed something new. Some of the nostril hairs that I’m trimming are white. And that's just the tip of the ice berg. I have lots of white hair in other places.  Where did it all come from?  The hair in my ears is white. My beard has been white for a long time. My chest hair is turning white. The only place it's not white is on top of my head, and that's only because there really isn't much there.

It's not like I'm surprised to be getting older. True, I forget my exact age sometimes and have to subtract the year I was born from the current year. Really, objectively, I feel lucky to be getting old. By many measures, I shouldn't have survived this long. But here I am, saving for my retirement, wondering if universal health care will be a reality by the time I stop working.

I always told myself I'd age gracefully, without complaint, without regrets. Age is just a number, I always thought. I should welcome age and the wisdom it brings. Instead, I find myself continually surprised that the years are creeping up on me - and the decades are flying by.

Coming of age moments happen all the time.

For example, I occasionally go to the Village Inn near my office for breakfast. I've noticed that the same old guys are in there every morning. They talk with the servers like true pals, and say hello to each other by name. More often than not, the server doesn't even need to ask what they want to eat. She just brings it out. Kind of like how Betty knows to always bring me a coffee, no cream, and a large water. I kind of laughed at these old guys until it slowly dawned on me that I AM ONE OF THEM.

Face it: getting older is tough. Here are some of the frustrations I'm having as I age gracefully:

• Things I did to my body years ago are coming back to haunt me. I’ll spare you the details.
• I can't see.
• My memory isn’t exactly slipping, but I vividly recall a meal I had in 1987 - and I can’t remember anything about yesterday.
• I'm watching my friends age too. How can they look so much older while I still look the same?
• I'm working with people half my age who, for example, don't know the origination of the "cc" in email (if you're younger than 35, I should tell you that we used to type each letter by hand, using carbon paper to make carbon copies (hence the cc) because we couldn’t just print another document.
•  When predictions of a disastrous future are made, it is with guilty relief that I think to myself how great it is that I'll be dead before it happens.

Which brings me to the most startling thing about getting older. It is the thing that nobody talks about: the realization that you are going to die. With more than half your life behind you, time is limited. If you've always wanted to do something, now is the time to do it.

It's just a shame that I have to spend the rest of my life trimming unwanted hair from my facial orifices.

The Acceleration of Time (or What do You Mean the 30th Reunion is Next Year?)

Though I long ago resolved not to be preoccupied with age in my declining years, it's happening anyway.

Out of the blue, several Facebook postings this week herald the coming of my 30th high school class reunion next summer.

When I was in high school, I never contemplated living 30 years, let alone having a 30th high school reunion.

I didn't attend the 10th or 20th. I'm not sure I'll attend the 30th, but it’s happening regardless.

Where did the time go?

I've always heard from my elders (I very much respect them, by the way – young people, take note) that the older you get, the faster time flies.

When I was a kid, I was vividly aware of the differences between 1972, 1973, 1974, and 1975. To this day, I can see a hairstyle from the 70s and tell you within about 12 months what year it was popular. My bright plaid pants with cuffs looked great in 1974, common in 1975, and silly by 1976.

Fast forward just 10 years: I lived in a different city every year or two for most of the 1980s. If I now hear a Madonna song on the radio, I can tell you whether I lived in Lincoln, New York, Omaha, or Richmond when it was popular.

But things changed in the 90s. I stopped moving around, yet the years flew by. How can I be nostalgic for Breakfast At Tiffany's by Deep Blue Something when it seems like it just came out? By the way, I really like that new artist, Sheryl Crow. I hope her career takes off.

I still wear shirts I wore in 1999. They look ok to me - maybe a little tight. Have I become an old dork? I'll never forget going out once with a slightly younger guy who guessed my age based on my shoes. Any self-confidence in my animal magnetism quickly evaporated.

The days, weeks, months are flying by. I regularly say, "Is it Friday again already? Where did the week go?" The good news is that while weekends once seemed so few and far between, they now come with increasing frequency.

I read a month or so ago (or was it a year or two?) that scientific studies point to possible physiological reasons why older people experience time in an accelerated way. It may be more than just the perspective of age.

So I have just one question. If time is speeding up, why is the last 30 minutes at the office the longest hour of the day?