everything and nothing

Do you ever have one of those days when you're busy all day only to find at the end of it that everything that was on your to-do list in the morning is still there? It's times like this when I almost wish I had a webcam mounted on top of my screen so I could answer the question "what did I do all day?" Sure I have notes and phonecalls and meetings and documents to prove that I really did show up this morning and didn't spend the day watching Strongbad go another round with his emails. It's not quite the same though; especially when the things on the list were important things, they still are important things and the deadlines are now just a little closer.

Where did the time go?

It's a question that gets asked a lot. In Einstein's Dreams author Alan Lightman writes stories of time. What would it be like if time went backwards? What if we knew when time would stop? What if time were a fixed point and the farther away you got from it the slower time moved? Good questions all. But time, for all that it seems to speed up and slow down, is in truth a constant rhythm. It is a heartbeat sounding quietly (or not so quietly) in the background of our lives. On days like today I wish that time had colour or substance -- something that I could point to and say "oh look, there goes the time". Maybe we could colour code it so I could track where my time was going and you could track yours.

Even so, I'm sure I'd still be sitting here at the end of a day when I've done everything and nothing shaking my head at the thought that something as personal as my own day is so often outside of my own control.