I have no concept of time

Dear readers,

I have not posted in quite sometime, and I will rectify this situation. An explanation follows:

I have no concept of time. I am not just stealing that joke from whatsisname, you know, the dude who says that. I am very good at judging intervals on the clock, however, and I generally know within a few minutes what time it is currently, when events will occur or did occur with pretty good resolution, often down to the exact minute.

What I lack, however, is any internal clock whatsoever. I am intellectually aware that on monday I will have to return to class (blast), but the last truly conscious thought I had was on thursday evening, when I was about to climb into bed, and I got a call from a friend who was across the street at the bar. It is now saturday at four pm. Such things happen in my life, regularly, and I can explain why.

I obey Newton's first law: a body at rest will remain so unless acted upon. That is, I have a very high inertia. This is why I relate to sleep so strangely: when I am awake, I remain so, until acted upon by another force (Theo's fist, bourbon, 96 hours of wakefulness, any/all literature) and I pass out. Accordingly, when I am asleep, I remain so until another force (class, desperate need to urinate, raging hangover, near starvation / dehydration, realization that the sun is setting) gets me out of bed. Apparently, the same applies for other states of being: when I blog, I blog a lot. When I am not blogging, months elapse without me noticing. Similarly, when I am drunk, I prefer to stay that way.

A good indicator of this phenomenon of behavioral state inertia (i just coined that phrase, feel free to steal it) is that at this age days no longer act as delineators of time. I make no assumptions, because as far as I am concerned, it is more efficient for me to assume you are stupid and ignorant, so I cannot be certain of your experience, but I know that when I was a child days each seemed like discrete events, with a full plot arc, a beginning, a middle, and an end. No longer. Now days fly by and I feel nervous making plans on a thursday if it is saturday because jesus I may still be drunk by then. A good, poetic, and original analogy is thus: it is like my life is written in ink on the pages of journal that was dipped in water, and the days have all run together. Somehow, however, I still manage to be a (semi) functional member of society.

So cheers, dear readers, for I have returned, and am ready to drop some truth bombs on your ass.

--RG