Living on Internet Time

For many years now, I have been living on Internet time. Since moving to Annapolis, Maryland on Eastern Daylight Time and away from my usual Mountain Daylight Time, I am becoming even more disassociated from any regular time schedule. It is sort of like living with perpetual jet lag. When I post something on my blog, the time stamp usually shows Pacific Daylight Time. I can also set any time, day or night, for the blog to automatically post. In addition, I post from many different places around the United States and into other countries. Consequently, my blogs are almost entirely disassociated with any particular local time.

In addition, I receive email in a constant stream from around the world. I rarely notice the time when the email was written and my response could be any time during both the day and night depending on when I have time to respond. Right now, I am regularly corresponding with someone who is living in Poland. The emails show postings at midnight and in the early morning. My responses do not correspond to any actual time in Poland.

You might be only vaguely aware, but there is a Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Universal Time originated from the International Meridian Conference in 1884. The starting place for time is the Prime Meridian, a transit circle through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, England. All this doesn't really help with the problem that any local time of day is arbitrarily determined and changes constantly around the world.

For example, my relatives in Australia have three time zones. Like those in the United States, rather than being straight lines north and south oriented, they correspond roughly to the Australian Provinces. Here is a map showing the time zones of the world.

By United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) - https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/graphics/ref_maps/physical/pdf/standard_time_zones_of_the_world.pdf, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30420066

Here is the United States, we also have Daylight Savings Time. To add insult to injury, twice every year the "time" changes for obscure historical reasons that make little sense in a world that operates like I do, 24 hours a day.

So, I you wonder if I ever sleep? The answer is obviously yes, but I may be working at any given time day or night.