Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot?

Happy New Year!

It's that time of year again--the end of it! 

Though all of the hullabaloo over the end of the world about a week ago was all for naught, we can turn the pages of our calendars, or put up new ones, to celebrate the turning of Earth on its axis yet again. For those of us using the Gregorian calendar (i.e. most of us in the Western world) it will shortly become 2013! 

Wow...it seems like yesterday it was 2012! And it was. Sometimes I wake up thinking it's still 2008. Is there such a disease as understanding the movement of time but not internalizing it? If there is, I might have it. I don't know where my time goes. I don't know if it hides from me until it runs out and gives up, or if I don't give it enough incentive to stick around...maybe I just waste it, and Time has decided to bank on better options.

I am a terrible procrastinator, something those nearest and dearest to me have known for a long time. I never send birthday cards on time. My applications, essays, work assignments, etc., sit undone until the eleventh hour. I arrive "fashionably late" to basically every event I'm invited to. I think they will prove some day soon that procrastination is genetic, since my dad and sister are worse than I am, and despite hundreds upon thousands of times they could change, they just don't--and neither do I. It's become so bad that anyone who knows us well enough always gives us invitations for 30 minutes ahead of schedule, assuming we'll be 30 minutes late, i.e. on time.

Here in the South of France, it's not a big deal to be late. In the scheme of things, the French are often called schizo-chronic, a crazy and unpredictable time schedule somewhere between poly-chronic time managers and mono-chronic time managers. In Paris, things are more fast-paced and the schedules seem to run more toward the Germanic/Britannic time schedule (mono-chronic) but in the south, like Marseilles, or here in La Ciotat, things are much more laid back and Mediterranean (poly-chronic). Just about everything can wait until tomorrow. Feathers aren't ruffled by much. 

It's nice in a way...like all the stress I cause by being late in a mono-chronic culture really isn't worth it. I can rip up my schedule and have another cup of coffee before I hit the road, because everyone else--socially and professionally--is going to be "fashionably late" like me! It's a good feeling.

Bonne Année à tous!