Trying to stare down time

I have a lot of time on my hands right now. I mean, literally, I have a lot of time in the form of clocks and watches, and they keep staring at me like I'm supposed to be doing something with my time now that I've retired.

Within my field of vision of my writing space here at home, I have six clocks telling me what time it is. Worse, they keeping tell me I have a lot of time on my hands.

What is it about retirement and watches/clocks? Why are they usually given as gifts when someone retires? A web search to answer that question doesn't offer much help. The search results are almost exclusively gift ideas for retirement and 95 percent of the gift ideas are for watches or clocks. Could it possibly be rooted in the notion that retirement gives us time to do whatever we want? Or is it meant to remind us how much time we put into a particular job?

I received one retirement gift that feeds the notion. It came from my wife Jane -- at the suggestion of her brother David -- and it marks my retirement date and the 30 years I was with the company. And, as I indicated above, it ticks away on my desk along with five other time pieces -- an electronic baseball scoreboard that has an electronic clock, a clock that also keeps track of low and high tides, the clock on my computer screen, the clock on my cellphone and the Timex on my wrist.

Then there's my body clock ... which does a pretty good job of keeping general time, especially when it's time to eat. It tells me when to get up; it tells me when to sleep. (And these days when it tells me to take a quick sleep in the afternoon, I don't have to tell it no.)

It was my body clock that has required the most adjustment -- the greatest amount of re-timing -- in the couple of months since I stopped working full time. My work week for many, many years was fairly regimented, each day a structured effort to get things done. At the gym most mornings to get the exercise part done. At the office by 9 a.m. to get the work part done. Eat lunch at noon to get the nourishment part done. Drink coffee at 2 p.m. to get the mid-day kick part done. Home by 6 p.m. to get the dinner part done. In bed by 10 p.m. to get the sleep part done.

The assumption by most people was how great it would be not to be a slave to time. I could sleep in. I could stay up as late as I wanted. In fact, for a while there the body clock went in the opposite direction. For example, it alarmed me awake at 5 each morning, anxious about what was on the day's agenda, when in fact there wasn't much of an agenda at all. Yes, there was some online content I've been developing, but nothing that required me to be awake that early. I'm an early riser, but 5 a.m. was a little excessive.

The good news is that after a couple of months my clocks and I have reached an understanding. Chill out. There's no hurry, no reason to get anxious, no need to be running mentally through a to-do list at 4:45 a.m. There's plenty of time for everyone and everything. Want to surf? There's time for that. Want to write and develop some online content? There's time for that? Want to do yard work? Well, let's not get carried away.

Time is not the enemy, which is something Jean-Luc Picard, the sage captain of the Starship USS Enterprise, observed during the 1994 movie "Star Trek: Generations."

"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives," he said. "I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived."

I have plenty of companions for my journey. If I could just get them all agree to what time it is.