Several years ago, a friend introduced me to the concept of “Social Time vs Normative Time.”
“Normative Time” is the idea that things happen at certain times: dinner is at 6, the meetup officially starts at 5, things like that. It’s generally considered to be the default time system in America.
“Social Time” is something that I’ve more often seen in the context of specific places: Moroccan Time, Island Time, Greek Time. Time is more fluid; you get there when you get there; you don’t stress if you’re late or your friend is late.
I, myself, am a Normative Time person who is very bad at it.
Today I was reminded of the Captain Awkward column on Perpetual Time Optimism because Reddit shared it with me. It gets a bit spicy in there (in both).
In general, in my life, I try to strike a balance between both types of time. I’m sympathetic to the time blind people; I’m often late to things, and it takes me a LOT of effort to do all the things to get to something early, especially if it’s already early in the morning. But I also want to be able to do things like “see a movie” and “eat at a restaurant” and so forth! So in general I try not to invite the very time blind person to things where “being late” would put a cramp in someone ELSE’S day.
Emilybook 