Death is not worse pain than an empty life. -- Lun Tha

So I've been up for about an hour. Which is utterly normal for me, though it is shy of four in the morning. And I'm thinking, as always, of the times where my friends and net-acquaintances live. Timezones carve up our world into two separate days...something that has always fascinated me. My world is viewed through a telescope that doesn't have "views" so much as it has "hours."

A lame vision, perhaps, but remember, it's not quite four in the morning.

I am thinking of a literary young lady who is nine hours ahead of me. An amusing husband and father who is three hours ahead of me and probably listening to some of our favorite 80's music on the way to work just now. I can visualize family, two hours ahead of me. Some are asleep, others awake. My dearest Cordelia, kindred spirit that she is, is on my time now, and so I don't have to toss my brain back an hour. My editor is three hours behind me, I believe, and I think of him and his wife on their island, roasted by hardware malfunctions. *wry smile* I can't even think of the Australian contingent. My brain isn't that flexible before coffee.

I think, too, of later this year. I'll be in the Eastern Time Zone, then. An hour ahead of my family on a permanent basis. How strange! How odd! I'll have to reformat my entire life, or my telescopic perspective, anyway. I think, this autumn, it'll be almost seven in the morning...not four in the morning.

Thus are the random thoughts of my poor, decaffeinated brain. I have a manuscript to review. Can't do it just now...too unfocused. I have critiques due Wednesday night. Can't do them now, either...I like to be alert when I critique. Wow. Shocking. I have a novel to edit. Work, can you believe? It's still there, waiting for me. I have two weeks from tomorrow to get it done.

Time. It always come back to time because that's one resource that is absolutely unrecyclable.

Maybe I should get that coffee and use my time more wisely, hm?