Friday, February 11, 2005

WAITING

It seems, that despite the rush, rush here, rush, rush there tone of our lives that we spend a great deal of time cooling our heels. Not just little blips of time, such as waiting for the train to pass or being stuck in traffic but great big blips of time. Last week I alloted 2 hours toward waiting for the Doctor, this week it was a 3 hour stint at the auto repair shop.

Is this anyway connected to rise in laptops, iPod, cell phones, PDAs, Blackberry etc. etc.? In our driven world, must we all do something (perferably two somethings) during all this enforced downtime?

Today, while waiting for the car (which was about as interesting as Waiting for Godot) I had my laptop and was busy tweaking a PowerPoint project for a lesson I'm working on. One other person was plugged into her iPod while studying and a business man was reviewing contracts and talking on his cell phone. One woman was actually carrying on two conversations at once - one with her job on a land line and another with her mother on a cell phone. One sturdy nonconformist was napping - though how he could sleep through all the noise is still beyond me.
So not only did we have much activity going on, but there was some serious multi tasking going on as well.

Once my car was done I headed home and was caught by a very long freight train. I read the newspaper while waiting.

1 comment:

Julie said...

Maybe because we have the laptops, iPod, cell phones, etc., we feel we ought to be doing something productive while we wait. If our lives in general moved at a slower pace we probably wouldn't notice the times we have to wait. Me, I'd leave the laptop at home and do some knitting while I waited.