Date and Time

You know, it's funny. When I was in High School, one of my favorite teachers threw out a funny little anecdote. He said that when the Indians met with the first European colonists, they were amazed. Not just at the sickly white people who desperately needed food and exercise after months on a boat, but also at the colonists' fascination with time.

They marveled at the white folks' obsession with the Almighty Pocketwatch. The weird-ass pasty people were downright obsessive, centering everything they did every day around a weird mechanical paperweight.

Now, I'm pretty skeptical of this. For one thing, it sounds just like the kind of story hippies would pass around their drum circle, justifying why they slept through their morning classes. "Pfft, clock-worship is so insipid and arbitrary and *insert pseudointellectual big word here*. I bet the Prof doesn't even make time to smoke weed and look at the stars! Lame, bro. Lame."

But if it's true--and really, even if it isn't--it's kind of an interesting point. Why do dates, times, and calendars mean so much to us?

I could point out the obvious--that strict scheduling improves productivity--but that totally nullifies the whole point of this blog post, doesn't it?

What is the point of this blog post, I hear you ask? This whole thing is just a long-winded excuse why Emergence, my first novel, doesn't have a planned release date yet.

Pfft. Clock-worship is insipid and arbitrary anyways.