Autopilot

It's something I've always noticed, but it especially comes to the forefront when you're suddenly out of it - your mind and body gets into a routine that it grows adjusted to and dependent on, and when something conflicts with that engrained schedule there's immediately warning bells or notable "Wait, what?" moments to alert you to the changes you're exposed to.

I'm not really referring to time zones this time, though that is definitely a mind game in itself to see my laptop say it's 11:00AM when every other clock around me (including my phone, which auto-adjusts based on the region it's in) says that it's 3:00PM. Of course that plays with my internal clock, making me tired or having issues concerning when I consume food - if I eat before 11:00AM Pacific time, my stomach gets really unsettled, it's just something I've always had so I've learned to deal - but what I'm referring to this time with this entry are the small expectations that come with living your life a particular way and then removing yourself from that environment.

This mainly came to mind when I was freshening up in the bathroom an hour ago - I had turned the fan on, and I found myself mentally timing how long it would take for the fan to turn itself off. In Victoria, our bathroom had a fan that you could turn on with a timer; I'd always set it to 15 minutes as a "You should be out of here when this ends" reminder, but at my friend Bethley's it is simply a switch that you turn on and then flip off when you are done. There is no timer, but I found myself listening and looking to hear the ticks that the other timer would make. I had trained myself to listen to and expect that noise. It's really weird not to hear it now.

There's a more humorous example of subconsciously training myself and then having it flipped around and messing with my head though. When I lived in British Columbia, I would always work out in my head what time it was in Nova Scotia whenever I was texting a friend from there. I would always add four hours to the time I saw to convert it to Atlantic time. Today, I woke up and went to check out what time it was on my phone - it said 11:30AM, and I had a slight panic attack thinking it was 3:30PM where I was (which is near the time I'm supposed to be going out to meet up with another friend), having completely forgotten that again, the phone automatically adjusts to the new time zone. In my confusion I had to check a clock behind me to confirm that it actually was 11:30, and then found myself surprised that I had woken up before noon. I have speculated that I managed that because both Skye and I had stayed up the entire time on the overnight flight, so our internal clocks were not still set to the Pacific coast. It is nice to be able to enjoy a few extra hours of the day you were not expecting to be awake for; you just have to be aware that there's likely to be more than a few times that what you're doing will feel "off" to you, because your schedule and environment has changed.

I'm staring at my laptop clock and it still is a bit hard to wrap my head around that it's only 11:20AM there now. Maybe it's because I don't feel like it's that time of day for me (though neither does it feel like 3:20, it might as well be 10PM in my head), but it's also likely the fact that my friends have only now just started their days with work/whatever when I've been up for awhile.

Another expectation I always had was how the internet would always have interesting things to look at upon my waking or in the early hours of the afternoon - with the Pacific coast being mostly behind everyone else, updates on webcomics/videos/Facebook/etc came a lot earlier in the day. Now it feels like nothing's ever happening on here; it's quite odd.

Well, I have to get ready to head out, so I'm going to end this entry here. Hope you're all having a great Sunday and that you're enjoying the long weekend! Peace!