Time keeps on slippin...

I recently came to a realization.

While on my morning stroll from my parking spot to the bus stop, it dawned on me.

Time isn’t my enemy.

I have always been one to be punctual. Maybe it had something to do with my Dad being a military man, but I’ve always doted-on being on-time.

It’s a respect thing for me. If I agree to meet you at a certain time, I better damn well be there. As you are taking time-out of your day for me. Being late just infuriates me...even if it doesn’t bother the person I am meeting.

More precisely, I should say it infuriated me. In an attempt to relax and simply life, I have decided to take a little pressure off of myself.

During my walk, I asked myself this question: What is going to happen if I miss this bus and take the next one?

And the only answer I came-up with was: Nothing.

I’ve never looked at time as an ally. It was always an obstacle, something to be dealt with or worked around. It was always something there never seemed to be enough of and was a great source of stress for me.

Ironically, in my life-long attempt for punctual perfection, I was actually robbing myself of time. Stress isn’t healthy. In fact, it could cause conditions that would shorten my life.

When looking at it from that perspective, what is 5, 10 or even 15 minutes in the grand scheme of things?

In the past, I’d run to catch the bus while getting a lil flustered in the process.

Which brought back bad memories of 5th Period Spanish class from high school…See 5th period was the class after gym class and being a rather portly fella, I was that “sweaty guy” in class who no one wanted to sit next to. The same phenomena rang true recently on the bus.

So it would seem appropriate that this whole time realization came about as I was deciding if I needed to run for the bus or not.

I’ve decided against running. I just leave myself time in the morning to miss the bus if I want. And it’s actually pretty nice to just stroll at my own pace and enjoy being outside.

So, do I still fret about time? Oh yeah. I watch the clock like a hawk at work. But that’s more a commentary on my occupation than my pre-occupation with punctuality.

I am just more willing to put myself ahead of time. To decide if what I am doing at the moment is worth stopping because I am supposed to be somewhere. (A lot of the time, it’s really not.)

I actually think punctuality is becoming antiquated, with cell phones, email and text messaging re-scheduling can be done in a matter of seconds.

I remember the days before pagers and cell phones and making plans called for punctuality as neither party could easily communicate otherwise. That no longer applies.

Does all this mean I am throwing my devotion to punctuality out of the window?

Heck no. I am just not going to let it give me gray hair.

Gotta go, time to catch my bus.