My friend and last-blogger-standing, Peter Rukavina, emailed me this week to ask about a concept he remembered from my blog, but couldn’t find.
He called the concept Time Claustrophobia. I immediately knew what he meant. We must have discussed it in person, because there doesn’t seem to be anything about it here on my blog. Let’s correct that.
Time Claustrophobia is the feeling of anxiety cast by an impending appointment over the free time that precedes it.
For example, when I was younger I sometimes had shift-work that started at 4pm. The entire day, thought free and open until 4pm, felt constrained by the looming commitment near the end of the day.
Thank you.
Time claustrophobia can also play out over a longer time period.
For example, one of the great things about the trip we took to Berlin in the summer of 2011 was that we stayed long enough so that, in the middle of the trip, we were far enough from both the start of our stay and the end, that we were free of time claustrophobia. In other words, in an idyll where the impending departure back to our everyday reality hadn’t yet hit “4:00 p.m. Sobeys shift coming up” status yet.
I wonder if we talked about this in a Live from the Formosa Tea House episode; it seems likely. We’ll have to order transcripts.
Seems to me that Clockstrophobia would be a better term.