Time & Story Changes

"Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?"

Daylight Saving Time: the clock on the wall is out of sync with the clock inside me, and I don't like it.

Rather than go on about my dislike of clock changes, I'm thinking about the stories I tell myself. Clock time is, after all, just a shared story on which we agree. It gets us to parties and tells us when to leave.

Yesterday, we had one story about time. Today, we're been handed another. Overnight, there was a break that upset me, knocked me off balance. I was used to the old story and still cling to it. I have that habit.

Three years ago, my story had me playing the character of a terribly depressed teacher. The plot grew darker each day. The theme was of a character stuck, unqualified for any other work. It was a tragedy, that story was.

I thought the story was written for me, that I was a character following along, powerless, perhaps helpless. Stories become more powerful as they go on and I felt too far in to even consider breaking with that story.

Story breaks, even small ones, can be tough stuff. It takes me days to adjust to the time change. Climbing free of the main story of my life, well that seemed downright impossible.

Until it wasn't.

The change in time happened suddenly last night, like the flip of a switch. Two years ago, on a weekend morning in January, words suddenly formed in my mind and I wrote them on a page:

"I will quit my teaching job in June."

A new story began. Just like that.

I had considered quitting many, many, many times; dreamed of, wished for, and even planned it; but the old story rolled over any ideas I had for writing a new one. Two years ago, through some mechanism or good fortune I still don't understand, one simple sentence broke two decades of story in which I had been stuck. Poof, like magic. A new story was begun.

After that, came the slow work of writing the new story. I told my wife. I told my daughters, brother, mother, friends, and colleagues. I began creating a character who no longer believed in being stuck at that terrible school though he didn't yet know what else to become.

Mostly, I accepted the responsibility of writing my own story. That sounds great, but it is also a burden. There are times when it's easier to play along in a story being written for me. But all those stories turn out to be tragic.

I still have stories to break down and rewrite, stories I tell myself about love and family, work and opportunity, health and growth, and on and on. Just noticing that I'm the writer of those stories helps remind me that I can move them and myself in new directions.

The clocks have changed. It's 9:41, not 8:41. I didn't get to decide that one, buy my story continues to roll out onto the page in blue ink from the pen held in my hand and as for the story of what time it is, Chicago was right to wonder why anybody cares.