Saturday, March 07, 2009

There is no change in time

..only in our naming of it..

A blog I read regularly of a guy who is also essentially homesteading, though in the desert, put it pretty well:
What do you know?....the clocks get set forward tonight! Traditionally, this is known as loosing an hour. When I was in college this meant loosing one hour of partying and classes starting one hour earlier the next day. With my new lifestyle here in the desert - this time shift that happens twice a year has little meaning other than figuring out what time it is when I call friends and family in other time zones. I go to work when I feel like it and I quit when I'm done. It is only about sunrise and sunset and the high temperature of the day and whether or not it rains out here.


When you are living your life, you measure time in very different ways. Sun rises.. rain storms, sun sets, seasons, crops..

For instance, tomorrow morning I am going to be helping Rancher Bob put in some berry plants. We are going to do this in the morning.. unless it is raining, then we will do it later.. So what "time" in the morning? When it is time.. When we get to doing it..

Now do not get me wrong, I am not saying that life is all just sort of dabbling about in whatever we want to do.. okay well it sort of is, but certainly for myself as a homesteader, as one who will be living off of this land and in a house of my own construction there are schedules and there are things which must be done. However unlike the workaday world, those schedules are not arbitrary nor do they revolve about the rotation of the hands on the face of the clock.

BTW you know why they are called hands on the face of a clock? My theory is that they are trying to hide the face in shame.. No one should enslave themselves to such a device.

If you are tired, sleep.
If you are hungry, eat.
If you are thirsty, drink.
If you are alive, LIVE dammit!




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