Different Clocks

I spent most of this week jetlagged.

Not just tired.

Confused.

My body thought it was yesterday.

My watch insisted it was tomorrow.

Somewhere in between were delayed flights, airport lounges and coffee with people I hadn’t seen in years.

It’s funny what travel does.

You leave looking for one thing and come home thinking about something completely different.

I thought this trip would mostly be about work.

Instead, it became about time.

Not the time on my watch.

The time we quietly use to measure our lives.

The conversations were easy.

The kind you can only have with people who’ve known you for years.

Within minutes you stop explaining yourself.

They already know the backstory.

We found ourselves laughing at stories I’d forgotten. Remembering people we’d lost touch with. Wondering where twenty years had disappeared to.

It struck me that none of us mentioned social media.

Nobody talked about followers.

Nobody compared calendars.

Nobody cared how many things we’d shipped this quarter.

For a little while, another clock took over.

Then I’d open my phone.

A new company.

A new book.

Another keynote.

Another announcement.

You know the feeling.

It doesn’t take long before you begin to wonder whether everyone else has discovered a clock you somehow missed.

AI hasn’t created that feeling.

If anything, it has simply turned the dial up.

Ideas appear in seconds.

Images appear in seconds.

Businesses seem to appear in seconds.

Everything feels like it’s moving.

And when everything is moving, it’s easy to mistake speed for progress.

That’s the thing about old friends.

Or maybe it’s simply people who’ve known you long enough.

They don’t measure your life in weeks.

Or quarters.

Or posts.

They remember the version of you before the titles, before the milestones, before anyone was performing for an audience.

They remind you that most of the things that matter grow so slowly you barely notice them happening.

Trust.

Perspective.

Taste.

Character.

None of them arrive overnight.

None of them can be rushed.

Somewhere over the Pacific, I realised I hadn’t come back to Australia to remember the past.

I’d come back to recover my perspective.

Looking backwards didn’t make me feel nostalgic.

It made me realise how much of life only makes sense when you stop long enough to notice the distance you’ve already travelled.

Jetlag eventually wears off.

Living by someone else’s clock is much harder to notice.

Maybe that’s why so many of us feel behind.

Not because we are.

But because we’ve quietly started measuring our lives against a clock that was never ours.

The internet keeps asking us the same question.

What’s next?

The people who know us best ask something much simpler.

How have you been?

I’ve been thinking about the difference ever since.