Where Does the Time Go? The Disappearing Afternoon

Where does the time go in retirement? On Wednesday, I created a Things to Do list with fourteen perfectly reasonable items.  Some tasks seemed trivial; five-minute jobs like making Memorial Day dinner reservations and calling for the cat’s vaccination records.

created by ChatGPT 5/10/2026

Others didn’t seem like they’d take that long. Pick e-cards for this month’s birthdays, make a maintenance request for things that still need to be corrected after our November move, and make a landscape request to replace some dying bushes outside our lanai.

Boy, was I wrong. Between hunting for the landscape form on the community website, trying to fill it out electronically, and uploading pictures of dying bushes, most of the afternoon disappeared. Four hours. Two hundred and forty minutes. The minutes just seemed to evaporate.

 Near the end of the day, I had only done 2 ½ things.

Am I imagining things, or did I get so much more done when I was working? I think it’s because, even while trying to be productive, I felt like I had an almost limitless amount of time ahead of me.

Now the texture of time has changed. I notice every hour differently. At this stage of life, time no longer feels endless, and I don’t want to spend what I have left wrestling with passwords, apps, and landscape request forms.

When I don’t get things done in what seems to be a reasonable amount of time, I feel the minutes ticking away. I want to accomplish so many things. I think of that song from Rent about 525,600 minutes in a year. When I was young, the minutes seemed endless. Now I feel like there’s only so much time left on the clock before my batteries expire.

Created by ChatGPT 5/10/2026

I shouldn’t complain. Living in an apartment complex with a maintenance crew, I don’t have to worry about fixing things myself.  On the other hand, I didn’t usually fix household stuff myself. Hubby was usually the fixer.  No maintenance forms. No pictures. All I had to do was say, "The kitchen drain is leaking.”

At least I have one heinous task fixed. After months of trying to keep the gritty floor on our lanai clean, we bought a Roomba-like machine, and it’s mopping the lanai even as I type. Of course, that comes with its chores, too. Picking up the cords and light furniture, spotting messy areas, and keeping the cat from turning the side brush into a toy. Oh, and the longest task: Figuring out how to operate the app to turn it on.

You might ask, "Why do I care how dirty the lanai floor is?” Your question about cleaning something that’s outside does make sense. Back in the seventies, I was vacuuming the patio, and a visiting friend said, “Why are you doing that? Don’t you know it’s outside, which has an endless supply of dirt?”

Point well taken, but I don’t like dirty floors, even if they are outside. I walk to the lanai from the kitchen with my socks on, and I don’t want my socks looking like I used them as a Swiffer.  Besides, the poor cat might get filthy paws and accuse me of kitty abuse.

By the way, the vacuum just told me, “Let’s start washing the roller mop with hot water.”

I responded, “Okay, do that!”

I’m hoping the “let’s” really means the machine will wash the roller mop by itself. I have no intention of getting up and washing the #@)&** mop. That’s why I paid the big bucks for the robot.

Speaking of learning the Roomba app, hubby and I bought an eCalendar for our wall.  We got tired of trying to coordinate our schedules. It’s supposed to talk with our various calendars: computer, phone calendar, and tablets.  Hubby struggled for days trying to get it to sync with his calendar. As the second user, I haven’t been so successful. I tried for hours again yesterday. I dug through the skimpy guide and googled it. Oddly enough, I was comforted by all the online comments from other confused users. But I still didn’t get my calendar entries on the device. I see why people get frustrated with tech.

from eCalendar website - works great for hubby

That was another four hours wasted with nothing to show for it except a better understanding of why people get frustrated with technology. At least I can look at the wall calendar to see hubby’s schedule. 

But then again, maybe I’m just protesting too much. So what if it takes me 240 minutes to submit a landscape form? The breeze is rustling through the palms, the cat is snoozing beside me, and maybe the minutes aren’t disappearing after all. Maybe they’re just being spent differently.