My latest experiment: Giving up time

For most of my life I have been glued to my watch.

I wear a watch on my left wrist, day and night, taking it off only to shower, and that is only when I didn’t have a water-proof rubber-like watch band.

I am particular about my watches. They have to have a night-light feature, like Indiglo, and they HAVE to be digital with the month, day, and the time to the second.

Growing up, it seemed oddly important to me to sign my diary entries to the exact second.

When I stir in the middle of the night, I need to know exactly what time it is so I know how much longer I can sleep. Now that I’m a married woman, I duck under the covers to use the Indiglo so I don’t wake up Jeff with the flash of light.

But it is winter, and my brain seems to get bored, so I decided a few weeks ago to test myself. A bit of a challenge I suppose.

So after my morning shower one day, I didn’t put my watch back on.

And now here I am, several weeks later, and I haven’t touched my watch since. And I’ve survived.

(But my left wrist STILL feels very naked.)

I have somehow survived not knowing what exact time it is. Even in the middle of the night.

For most of my waking hours I’m staring at a computer screen so the date and time is already glaring at me from Window’s bottom right corner.

And when I’m on my lunch break at work, I have my iPhone in my pocket. When I’m driving, I have my car dash board.

But once I was outside in our yard, and since it is cold and wintery, my iPhone wasn’t in my pocket, and Jeff asked me, “What time is it?”

I had to stare back numbly because, for maybe the first time in my life, I had no idea.

And you know what? It wasn’t near as terrifying as I had once imagined.