Respecting the Clock

As my title and stupid name I picked for myself show, I grew up a huge Vonnegut fan. I appreciate his work because he was the master of one-liners that would have me chuckling warmly. Like, "Bad chemicals and bad ideas are the Yin and Yang of madness.", or, "The good Earth - we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy." I also like how he played with the idea that the progression of time may not be linear, but then in the same writing concludes that it must be for sanity's sake. Billy Pilgrim may have been unstuck in time, but he might have had an easier time had he remained decidedly stuck.
Another viewpoint on the nature of time that I found amusing to ponder was one proposed by Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert. Adams said that most people believe there is such a thing as time only because they assume that objects actually move. Each moment in space is a still image that our awareness flows through, making it only appear as though we age, and move through life, and experience heartbreak and love, and all that jazz. I like this idea because it explains things like luck. People that seem to always move easily through life and have everything work out, just happen to be more aware of this nature of time, or rather, the absence of it. Perhaps not consciously aware, but some folks might have a knack for steering through the most desired path within these infinite combinations of moments. Finally, it says that life is nothing but a bunch of cartoons.
As I get older and more aspects of my life live and die by the clock; it gets sillier(and plain ol' destructive and crazy) to stray from a mainstream understanding of time. If success in bike racing is getting from one place to another faster than anyone else, the guy that doesn't milk every last second is going to lose. As the base period hours increase by the week, I also see that time is nothing to be found, but rather something to be made. If a grown man is to squeeze the most out of everyday, there is no choice but for him to have a profound respect for the simple 3 dimensional world that we have fashioned for ourselves.
In this spirit I've decided that I can no longer be unstuck. And if I ever thought I was, it's only because I was young and stupid. I still think we are pilgrims.