Tick, tick, tick. I knew that time was passing and didn’t need the dial on the toaster oven to remind me of every hypothetical second my bulkie roll would need to turn a golden color for my lunch, several thousand hypothetical ticks down the road.

Did someone at Sunbeam think it would comfort me; knowing of the slow march of time as my roll heated up? Did the final, “ding” at the end of the timer seem insufficient? It’s this kind of affirmation of linear time that I had given up long ago; back when I wore a watch and gawked at it blankly several times a day, still not acknowledging what time it actually was.

Time, my friends — after all, is stuff. It’s not just any stuff either but stuff we have left. Time passes, not by the audible ticks of a toaster oven but by check marks and crossed lines, real or imaginary, marking off our stuff.

Wake up, make lunch, get gas, call garage, go over lesson plans — oops, student meeting before school. That’ll bump some stuff. Did you call the garage? Ask my wife what she wants for dinner, “I don’t know, what do you want?”

We may or may not have settled on dinner before the next installment of whatever show we watch together comes on as I sit with my laptop open. “Are you doing work?”

“No,” I lie as I tidy up curriculum, assess newly finished essays on shared Google Docs or put my final ramblings in my column.

When we lose time we lose track of our stuff. The class that didn’t finish their work on Wednesday due to standardized testing will now be added to Thursday’s stuff.

We realize it too when others make requests of us unexpectedly; gazing back at them with a betrayed look, “I just can’t… I have too much stuff already!” Our eyes plead but time is indifferent. More stuff has just been piled on.

It’s why we get so upset when we discover that someone else has dropped the ball, “Why should I have to do their stuff ? I have stuff of my own to do!”

We care little that in a linear sense we will have to perform another thirty minute task. It’s the stuff that really sticks in our craw — makes us want to cause them to have more stuff in their life. We could even stretch and say that to be rid of stuff to do is our life’s purpose. What is retirement after all, if not an official way of saying, “I’m tired of all this stuff ?” Even death, then becomes, not an end to linear time but the cessation of stuff we have to do. Just ask anybody their view of heaven and they’ll describe a great place without stuff to do.

As I write, a clock behind me somewhere ticks, different from three other clocks in the immediate area; fuzzy time zones around the building. Here, the column is finished, check.

I’ll get a cup of coffee (check). By then my student will arrive (check). So, in that spirit, I’ll simply say, may you have less stuff but not a cessation of stuff in the new year — Slainte.

Douglas McIntire is a writer and teacher in the Midcoast. He can be found rambling about stuff incoherently around town or at [email protected].