Time on My Hands

Time On My Hands

I have been traveling a good bit lately and keep hearing a commercial on the radio asking what you would do if you had an extra hour of time each day.  It is an interesting question.  The commercial suggests several alternatives that some people might choose.  I’d like to say I would do something meaningful with an extra hour each day, but I suspect I would shortly become used to that extra hour and think that there still wasn’t enough time in the day once I became accustomed to the extra hour.  If put on the spot and forced to say how I would use it right this very minute, I would choose an extra hour of sleep.  I’ve read a handful of books on sleep and dreaming over the last few years and not getting enough sleep has many detrimental effects.  The Centers for Disease Control say that 1/3 of Americans get less than the recommended 7 hours of sleep each night.  I try my best and usually average right around 7 hours per night.    

I am pretty regular in tracking my sleep.  I have a Fitbit I wear at night to track my sleep.  In addition to time slept, it also tracks length of time to fall asleep, time awake, time in REM sleep, time in deep sleep, and provides an overall sleep score.  For example, last night I slept 7 hours and 56 minutes, I was awake for 48 minutes, I was in deep or REM sleep for 2 hours and 4 minutes, all of which resulted in a sleep score of 83.  The best sleep score I have ever achieved is 89.  After recording thirty days of sleep in a row, Fitbit will even give you a sleep profile which for some reason it describes as your sleep animal.  My sleep animal keeps changing though, which I’m not sure that is a good thing.  For the most recent thirty days on record, I was The Giraffe.  Fitbit says Giraffe sleepers are more likely to go to sleep later and wake earlier with a consistent sleep schedule and reaching quality sleep more quickly.  I’ve also been The Tortoise (twice), The Bear (once), and The Parrot (twice). 

If you have followed the news much this week or been online much, you have probably seen that many people are planning their time to see the Total Eclipse next week on Monday April 8.  Where I live will be about an hour or two away from being able to see the full extent of the eclipse.  I saw a graphic from AirBnb that almost all their rooms in the path of the total eclipse are booked.  There are people selling spots in fields and parking lots around the area of totality.  Eclipse glasses are selling like limited edition Pokémon cards.  Fierce debates are raging online as to whether kids should be taken out of school to see the eclipse. 

I remember the eclipse in 2017 that could be seen from where I live.  I recall being a little underwhelmed to be quite honest, but it was cool, nonetheless.  I thought it would be darker, but I remember it well as it was one of the rare times that everyone from where I was working was together for an event.  We had a cross section of staff, customers, and people from the community standing in a large parking lot taking turns looking in the sky with eclipse glasses. 

It is one of those scenes that would have to look odd and be hard to explain if an outside alien observer was viewing our behavior during the time of an eclipse.  I imagine an alien anthropologist might say something like:  The subjects were then observed to congregate in a paved rectangle square marked off by lines and to take turns looking up at the star their planet orbited wearing paper frames with protective lenses.  We suspect that this is some sort of ritual with an unknown religious or ceremonial significance.  They do appear to know that viewing an eclipse directly without protection will damage their eyes. Oddly, the leader of the land mass called America stared directly at the star without protective lenses.  He must have some kind of innate or acquired protective capacity which allows him to view the star directly without damage. 

I’ve thought about driving a couple of hours to see the eclipse in its totality, but it sounds like it may be more than I want to tackle for a Monday.  I think I will be content to view what can be seen from my neck of the woods. 

With the start of baseball season, I am now using some of the time on my hands to follow our national pastime.  I root for the Cincinnati Reds and after many long years of suffering, we finally have an exciting young team that finally looks like they may be in the mix for the next few years.  Their season last year was exciting, and they surprised many experts by probably being a year ahead of where people thought they would be last season.  I love all things baseball. 

I’ve played fantasy baseball for years and even played back when you had to calculate scores and standing by hand and had to wait for the paper to come out with the box scores the next day (sometimes two days if members of your team played on the West coast and the game didn’t end before the paper deadline).  I am in two online fantasy baseball leagues this year, a traditional Rotisserie league and a Head-to-Head Points league.  My teams are always named as a play on words and this year’s entries are Morel Victories and Hjelle Rolls (Christopher Morel is an outfielder for the Cubs and Sean Hjelle is a pitcher for the San Francisco Giants who played his collegiate baseball at my alma mater, the University of Kentucky). 

I have also been known to play baseball on the computer.  There now exists computer simulation baseball programs which allow you to manage your favorite teams from any time period, create your own team with your favorite players, or even create your own baseball universe.  For example, currently in the Mason County Baseball Alliance, the Rectorville Revolution, Helena Heroes, Weedonia Bombers, Dover Freedom, and Sardis Surge are all within one game of each other for the league lead.  Out of the Park Baseball is the simulation program I have played over the last twenty odd years.      

I have even taken to designing baseball watch faces as I couldn’t find any free ones that I liked for my smart watch.  Much to the disappointment of family and friends, I am Team Android and wear a Samsung Galaxy 4 smartwatch.  One of the cool things about smartwatches is that you can change the faces on the watch.  I was having trouble finding any free watch faces that I liked so I figured I would try to see if I could make my own.  I accessed the design tools and started tinkering around.  To date I have made thirteen watch faces.  To my surprise, some of them have even been downloaded for use by other users.  My Yankees watch face has been downloaded by 14 users so far.  I am still learning how to use the design tool, but it is relatively easy to use and exciting to see ideas become reality.  You can see my watch face designs at the following link: https://www.facer.io/user/1K2TiAQ7ja

To differing degrees, we all have time on our hands.  It is up to each of us to determine how to best use that time.  Whether you use it to sleep, watch baseball, or chase an eclipse, I hope you enjoy your time.