Some of the following strategies, though moderately time-intensive the first time you try them, produce materials that can be reused for years. (Bean 291)

My first thought in response to this prompt centered on the video art installation “The Clock” by Christian Marclay. “The Clock” is a video timepiece. Synchronized to real time, it runs 24 hours straight and features a separate brief scene from a movie for about every minute of the day.  The effect is hypnotic. The viewer must hold two diametrically opposed ideas of time in their head – one is unaware and yet acutely aware of time simultaneously.

I’ve spent the past couple months on vacation – the first long summer break I’ve had in many years.  I idled away unaware of time for days on end. Other than a few exceptions, I never set an alarm. And yet, in the back of my mind the time approached when I no longer would own my time. Blissfully unaware of the specific time, I was nonetheless feeling it slip away as the start of the term approached.

My habit involves the use of fragments of time, a moment here and a moment there. I treasure those moments, such as this one, when I can write at a swoop. But those few hours are fertilized by what I accomplish writing for a few minutes or even a few seconds in a parked car, in a meeting, waiting for a class to start, during TV, at a lunch counter. I will be surprised by what I write if I’m in the habit of putting words on paper even if I do not have the time to write. (Murray 4)

For the past few weeks, I’ve lived in the classroom. My idle moments have been spent planning lessons, inventing discussion questions, and reflecting on past experience.  None of this plotting has happened anywhere outside my imagination. Teaching, even when it’s not actually happening, can devour a lot of time.

Time rarely leaves my thinking while I’m teaching.  I worry about time – sometimes whether the time is too little for all I need to do, and other, lesser days, when the time drags and the class never seems to end. How to fill the time, whether to fill the time, consumes my thoughts. Teaching is done on the clock, as our students know even better than we do. Watch them start packing bags at precisely the right time as class winds down.

I’m now living in time, always aware of when I need to be somewhere and how long I have to get there [in mind and body]. I need to find my own time, even in small fragments, to live my own life and write my own story.