Time Travel and Other Scary Stuff

I've been a fan of science fiction and fantasy since I was a kid, largely because my older brother was such a huge fan of the genre (or genres, depending on how much of a sci-fi purist you are). Time travel was always a favorite theme and I loved getting lost in plots that involved a paradox, or two or three. Now that I'm a little older and time passes much more quickly than it did when I was 15, I am dealing with a different kind of time travel: the time travel that involves disappearing time.

Today is a very good case in point, or as Rod Serling would say, "Submitted for your approval." I usually have a To Do list for most of my day's work, a list I rarely complete. This morning, I had a couple of conference calls and a meeting; this afternoon was pretty open. So I figured I would get through several items on my ever-growing list and maybe make it shrink for a change. Hah! I did complete several projects, but somehow during the day, I managed to lose three hours of time. I felt like I was getting a lot accomplished, but I looked at the clock on my computer at about mid-afternoon (or so I thought) and it was actually 4:57.

It may sound like it isn't much of a big deal. We've all had those really busy days when you are running from one thing to the next and barely have time to eat a bite for lunch. But this was scary. My time gauge went completely out of whack.

See, I spent so much of the first part of my working career being acutely aware of time. Television news producers live and die by time. You are always aware of impending deadlines - the next next big story, the next newscast, whatever. You're always balancing chunks of time to fit your 30 or 60-minute news "hole." Here's a minute and a half for a story on a kidnapping, here's 30 seconds for a car chase (more if there's good video!), here's two minutes for the weather report and 20 seconds for the heartwarming tale of a duck being rescued from a storm drain. You always know how much time has passed and how much time is left. It's an occupational hazard that didn't go away when I left television news.

Until today. Blame it on too much to do in too little time or getting wrapped up in my work. I guess my biggest fear is that it really is a sign of old age. Ouch! That means it can only get worse from here on out.