Thoughts on Timespeed

It's a peculiar week. Or rather, it will have been, once it has ended. The most disturbing aspect has been the Timespeed. For a few weeks, admittedly, I have realized that my life is running gradually slower, on a sort of scratchy stop-action freeze frame that forces me to look at certain moments for several instants longer than is really necessary or comfortable. The bothersome part is that this deceleration seems to have started, well, accelerating. This morning, for instance, I woke up to discover that it was, in fact, yesterday morning. It appears that I have not only hit 0 miles per hour; I am in fact running backwards now.

And it wasn't just the wake-up that was not where it should have been. Yesterday morning (technically Thursday) I finished the bag of coffee I was almost done with and hit bottom on a box of cereal. However, when I started my routine today I had exactly one day's worth of coffee left in the bag, and the cereal box was out of the bin, refilled with one bowl's worth, and sitting in the cupboard just as if I hadn't finished it yesterday. For the second day in a row I was 7 minutes late to work, and I tripped over the same broken piece of sidewalk coming up Lincoln Avenue. That shard of concrete should not even have been there, because when I tripped over it yesterday I kicked it into the street.

The Reader still is not out, which makes sense, because it comes out today (or rather, tomorrow). I received yesterday's book shipment again, containing the same titles, and then I ordered books and groceries for the store, which I can only imagine will be received tomorrow, which is actually today. I remarked again while working in the cafe how interesting it is that so far I have made 5 glasses of milk, three of them for adults, when ordinarily no one asks for milk. Except today, and yesterday, which are the same thing.

The second surprising thing is that I'm now seeking to sell minutes and hours of my future life for a profit. It's an extension of the more classical idea of working for money, except that I've started placing allotments of my future time on Ebay and inviting the public to bid on them. So far tonight from midnight to 3am has fetched me a handy $58.29. I am expecting future success in this venture, and am brainstorming holiday specials, two-for-ones, and increasing my opening bids to meet escalating demand. I see my time as being extraordinarily marketable to several demographics in particular: people with less than an hour to live, people on a lovely vacation about to draw to a close, people who owe money they don't yet have, and people suffering from jet lag.

There is, of course, a problem. If my life continues to run backwards, I will no longer be able to market and sell my time. At least not in this way. I can't sell time I've already booked, and if it's in the past, the chances are good I've already spent it doing something. So on the same day I've discovered this marvelous new way to make a living, and at the same time the universe has audited me out of my good fortune.