Repetitive behaviour and the time Time stood still

I had a late night last night - basically celebrating in my subconscious mind the completion of the 5th minutes of a string of 7 minutes that I had pending since late April. With an apparent lack of sleep, I jumped out of bed realising that I had snoozed my cellphone alarms one too many times. It was 7.20am! (My daily target wake up time was 7am)

I took a quick bath and got dressed, with a quick glance at my watch - I remember seeing that it was about 15 minutes past my ideal departure time (which was 8am). Cutting short all the routine dilly-dallyings, I hopped into my car and ignited the engine. The radio digital clock flashed on at "8:00" and I was slightly stumped. It couldn't be that my radio clock had slowed down by 15 minutes in such a short time? I'd readjusted the time just last week!

Trusty watch of mine, which has lasted for a good 10 years or so!

Then it dawned on me, like a sun beam cutting through the cumulonimbus cloud, that my watch had died. Died at 3.13am to be precise. And not because I had been magically transported through time where the clocks stopped for an eternity. By that time, I was already reversing the car out the gates and there was nothing else I could do but to drive off to work. It was just before 8am - so I was slightly ahead of schedule.

As if being cheated by my watch first thing in the morning wasn't bad enough, I kept looking at my watch throughout the day to read the time! This happened a good 10 or more times - which just proves that I am a creature of habit and can't control the compulsion to glance at my watch every now and then. Every single time I looked, I would have a delayed reaction of recollection of the morning's event and chastise myself for not remembering fast enough! And this happened several times in front of my colleagues, who had a good time laughing at my folly!

It's curious how reliant I have become to little things like my watch or my phone, that when one or the other is out of hand I feel so vulnerable. So naked. So insecure. It is liberating to sometimes live without these items but admittedly I would still rather have them than without.