Word? Word.
I don’t know how to describe the feeling. I’m jetlagged ten hours in the future from the Pacific coast but my stream of information still comes from the past, from the US. Which is weird because it’s news, from Facebook to rss. It’s like total reverse from how time works on Earth. I’m in the future, getting the now talking about the future, from the past. It’s freaking me out.
Before when you were changing time zone you didn’t have this problem as you would have a strict cut from the location you were before. With our digital lifestyle, it’s so much blurrier. And I have both timezone wired in my brain now. The vicious part is that it’s more comfortable to wake up and read the news from the day before (which are the news of the day too, a looong day) than having them during the real day, compromising your productivity. It’s cool to end the day and have the time to check tweets and links from the US, the source control of 90% of what’s happening online (most of the interesting links I see in my US Twitter stream show up in my French Facebook stream, a week to three months later). I can really dig a subject instead of saving it for later that is, never go through it when I’m in California.
Problem is, it’s not that sane.
I’m here in France with my English name, my English writing, my English thoughts, my English reading, my English music and a hell lot of English culture. Which obviously raises the following question in the neutral-logic part of my brain: “so… What are you doing here again?”
The line between “it’s complicated” and “what a clusterfuck” is often thinner than expected.