Lost Day

A few years ago, maybe about 10 at this point,* I was really into the debut album by Third Eye Blind. Semi-Charmed Kind of Life was the big hit, but there were other tunes on the album I really liked, including a song titled Losing a Whole Year. The concept had to do, I believe, with drug use, or being lost, or the end of a relationship, or people who had it good and threw it away, or whatever you wished to read into the meaning of the song and the title. To me, the song was really catchy and the concept of pausing for just a few seconds and realizing that time flies screaming by was poignant.

Today is Sunday, January 20, and we've flown from VA to CA and sailed from San Diego to Mexico then to Hawaii and onward headed toward Japan, and we have passed through several timezones. At this point, I'm not exactly sure how many hours behind EST I currently am, but I think it's around 8 at this point. Tonight I'm going to have a real mind-bender when I wake up: it'll be Tuesday January 22. January 21 won't have happened, the day will not have existed, it will have been a day that was not.

I'm perplexed by it, too. Because of the time differences, we have to adjust, and tomorrow is the day that is designated as the non-day. As of now, we're 8 hours behind the time at home, and later tonight when the time comes we'll be about 16 hours ahead. Whoa.

It's been quite a trip thus far. Homeschooling is my biggest challenge and I'm learning how to do one-on-one teaching, I'm working a few hours a week on Lexis reports and spreadsheets, I'm taking an English class on Women Writers Around the Globe (and turned in a short paper today) along with a Philosophy course on Biomedical Ethics. Being out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 2,000 miles away from landing in Japan, hearing that the sea floor is 17,000 feet below, and looking out and seeing water spanning everything and no landmarks makes me realize I'm in a position I've not ever been in before.

So, on the day that I'll have that doesn't exist, what should I do? Party like it's 1999? Stay up all night? Meditate? Hop on the spin bike? Read from Midnight January 20 for a few hours straight through January 22?

Whoa, indeed.




* With limited internet, I wasn't able to Google Third Eye Blind, but there are several research websites the ship allows that don't eat up your internet allotment (whoever knew that bandwidth was a limited resource?) including some UVA cites and Wikipedia. I see now that 1997 was the year the album came out. There's even a nice little snippet of the song. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Losing_A_Whole_Year.

Postscript: I finally got to meet Archbishop Desmond Tutu this evening, and he's evidently enamored with Ellen. She introduced me, and I am thrilled to have shaken his hand. I guess I made my decision to do something for this evening when the calendar skips forward a day: I've uncorked a Merlot and will have a glass as the day slips away; I probably won't be pouring any out for my homies...