When will you be back?
Oh, you know, whenever.
Yes but when?
This evening, I mean, however long it takes, right?
Ok, it would be really helpful to know which hour, so I can plan when to start cooking.
Right, Right, yes, well, uuuugghh, lets say between 4 and 7, how’s that?
Ok I guess I’ll see you later then.
Perfect.
It has been a bad month when it comes to time. I’m mostly blind to it, or profoundly disinterested, or I find the idea of imagining and planning within it to sit scratchily on the surface of my mind like a mental hairshirt.
But this month would have been much better if I could have communicated about how I would be organising my time.
It would have been better for the people around me if I wasn’t the very most pampered prince of prickery about saying when I will do something. Like when I will be home, or when I’m going to be working, or when a task will be done, or when I’m leaving.
Until yesterday if you asked me about time and weren’t paying me for my labour the answer would have been a vague shrugging aloof dismissal. The subtext of which went something like this:
Oh dear, how dreary to concern oneself with such constrained and mundane matters as the hours of the clock, pff, such trifles are anathema to me, for I, the very spirit of liberty, exist in the timeless now, forever at peace.
I’m a slow kind of cove when it comes to seeing myself, so I asked for someone to reflect my time style back at me. I would ask a simple question about when and they would answer as I usually do.
This resulted in the kind of conversation at the top of the page, it also resulted in my shoulders involuntarily tensing up, rising to my ears, hardening with frustration, involuntary gasps of exasperation, full body wave of incredulous revelation as I saw my behaviour for the first time.
I have been a real pain to deal with. It feels so wildly insulting to be on the other end of this kind of chat. Like for goodness sake, just think for a second, just treat me with the smallest scintilla of respect and give a firm commitment to a time.
So friends, I promise to put more effort into my responses to temporal questions.
Please bear with me as I climb down from the high horse atop a pedestal on the upper floor of my ivory tower. I come to you with contrition at 12.23 on the 2nd of September 2026.