Your new relationship with time

I have never, in my life, heard so much talk about washing dishes.

When we could still roam free, the answer to “how was your day?” tended to be light on the details. Unless there was drama to unpack, a new idea to explore or a discovery to share, the conversation could safely move on to other things.

Now, heading into my fifth week of confinement, I find myself recounting (and listening to) detailed replies with great tenderness and interest. “I read my book, aired out the place, cleaned up my playlists, wiped down the doors of my kitchen cupboards, watched more of that Spanish series, made bread, napped, FaceTimed, tried to do an online Pilates class…”

The kind of minutiae that even my 80-year-old mother would shrivel away from.

But we have to quantify our time differently now. Stripped of the schedules that kept us in line — freed from the brag of just how busy we are — we have to find new ways to define our experience of time. The clocks have been unspooled and us along with it. Rather than focus on achievements and how we cheated time to get more done in the waking hours allotted to us, we have turned to new metrics. Small details have attained a more precious status. That list you roll out holds the key to your health, your sanity, your survival. Each previously-insignificant moment is now part of a…