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The Only Thing More Predictable Than Changing the Clocks is the Complaints About It

This past weekend, the clocks moved ahead for Daylight Saving Time in about one-third of the world, and right on cue, the annual chorus began. People complain about losing an hour of sleep. They complain that it messes with their body clock. They wonder aloud why we still bother with this system in the first place.

Then, six months later, when the clocks go back the other way, the complaints start all over again. Only this time they’re about how early it gets dark in the evening and how depressing it feels when night arrives before dinner.

Which leads to a fairly simple conclusion: no matter what decision is made about the clocks, someone will be unhappy with it.

If we keep changing the clocks twice a year, people complain. If we stop changing them, people complain. If governments choose permanent daylight saving time, critics will point to the darker winter mornings. If they stick with permanent standard time, others will argue we’re losing those beautiful long summer evenings.

At some point you realize the clock debate isn’t really about the clocks at all. It’s about people.

For most of human history, time was simple. People worked when the sun rose and stopped when it set. Modern life changed that.

Factories, railroads, broadcast schedules, and school systems all needed people to operate on the same timetable. That’s why standardized time zones were created in the nineteenth century. Later, daylight saving time was introduced as a way to make better use of the longer daylight hours during the spring and summer months.

The concept itself is fairly straightforward: shift the clock so more daylight falls in the evening, when people are more likely to use it. In theory, it made sense. In practice, it created one of society’s most reliable seasonal debates.

I’ve always liked the longer evenings that arrive once the clocks move ahead.

After months of winter afternoons that seem to dissolve into darkness by late afternoon, the return of daylight in the evening feels like someone has opened a window. I have more energy and feel better. Suddenly, the day feels bigger. People stay outside longer. Parks fill up again. Golf courses get busier. Restaurants start putting chairs back on patios. For those of us in more northerly locations, it is a huge relief. Whew! Made it through another winter.

You finish work and realize you still have time to go for a walk, sit by the water, or simply enjoy the evening light. It’s a small change on the clock, but it often feels like a big change in mood.

Still, even with those benefits, the complaints arrive every year right on schedule.

Things could get even stranger if different states and provinces start choosing their own systems, which one just did and some are considering. British Columbia, Canada, just went to permanent Daylight Saving Time.

However, imagine a stretch of highway in the American Midwest where Missouri decides to remain on standard time year-round, neighboring Kansas adopts permanent daylight saving time, and Colorado continues switching clocks twice a year as it always has. In theory, you could drive west and watch the time jump forward, backward, and sideways depending on which border you crossed. A lunch meeting scheduled for noon in one state might be 11 a.m. just across the line and 1 p.m. in the next. Airlines, broadcasters, truckers, and anyone scheduling meetings across state lines would suddenly have a much more complicated calendar.

At that point, the real problem wouldn’t be daylight saving time. It would be remembering what time it actually is.

The reality is that every possible system has tradeoffs. Some people prefer brighter mornings. Others value longer evenings. What feels ideal for one group feels inconvenient for another.

That’s why the debate keeps returning year after year. Despite all the complaints, something interesting usually happens once the clocks move ahead in the spring. Within a week or two, most people settle into the new rhythm without thinking about it very much.

They go for evening walks and sit outside longer. They linger on patios. The clocks change and life adjusts. And before long everyone gets used to it. Until the next time we change the clocks again.

And when that happens, one thing is guaranteed: right on schedule, someone somewhere will start complaining about it.

The Quiet Road Where Bonnie and Clyde Died

The next entry in my occasional travel series of places I’ve been to.

Some places don’t look like history. Instead, they look like nothing.

A rural road with trees leaning lazily over the shoulder while a gentle breeze blows. But so does silence. And yet you stand there knowing something violent once tore the air apart.

That’s how it felt visiting the site where Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were ambushed and killed on May 23, 1934, near Gibsland. The road is paved now and if you didn’t know the history, you’d drive past the marker without a second thought. But when you do know, the quiet feels heavier.

In 1934, it wasn’t pavement. It was dirt and dust and pine trees lining a rural Louisiana highway. Lawmen waited in hiding, tipped off and determined to end a crime spree that had gripped America during the Great Depression. When Bonnie and Clyde’s stolen Ford approached, the officers opened fire almost instantly.

More than a hundred rounds were fired in seconds. Today, you stand there and hear nothing and at the same time, hear the sound of gunfire during the ambush.

You picture the car rolling slowly into the trap and the chaos. The way violence echoes differently in a place that had been so quiet moments before. It’s eerie – not in a haunted-house way, but in the way that history sometimes presses close to the surface.

The site isn’t replete with spectacle. Just a marker, a sense of location, and the knowledge of what happened. That’s almost what makes it more powerful. It remains just a road, which in its own way unsettles you. You know what happened here and why.

Bonnie and Clyde have long since become myth. Movies, books, photographs – including that famous image of Bonnie posing with a cigar and a pistol – have turned them into rebellious icons. The 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde helped cement their outlaw romance in American pop culture.

But standing on that quiet stretch of Louisiana highway strips away the mythology and makes you face reality: They were killers. There’s no soundtrack and no slow-motion drama. Just heat, trees, and the realization that this was a final, violent moment in a desperate era. The Great Depression bred both hardship and legend, and Bonnie and Clyde became symbols of rebellion against banks and authority – even if the reality was far more brutal and tragic.

Traveling to places like this does something to you. It reminds you that history didn’t happen in black-and-white. It happened in real color, under real skies, on roads that still exist. The same wind that moves through the trees today moved through them that morning in 1934. You find yourself trying to reconcile the ordinary setting with the extraordinary event.

It’s similar to standing on a battlefield, at the site of an assassination, or in a prison like Alcatraz, where notorious figures were held. The land absorbs the violence and time softens it, but it doesn’t erase it.

And maybe that’s what draws me to places like this. It’s not a morbid curiosity; it’s a desire to connect with history, not just read it in a book or watch a documentary. I want to be there. To feel, even briefly, the weight of a moment that changed lives and shaped stories.

When I left, the road looked as calm as ever. Cars passed. The world moved on, as it always does. But for a moment, standing there, you could almost hear the echo of bullets in the trees. And that’s something a history book can’t give you.

When Your Instinct Says Step Back

There’s a difference between someone who talks too much and someone who sets off alarms. The former drains you while the latter tightens something in your chest and has your Spidey-sense tingling.

A lady a few years older than me walked into the hangout mid-Friday afternoon. I was taking the afternoon off for the long weekend and she attached herself to the nearest available person – me – at the bar-like counter with a velocity that bypassed normal social sequencing. There was no easing in, just a deep dive on her part. Just questions. Immediate and personal.

At first, I tried to normalize it. Some people overshare, while some don’t read cues.

Then the questions shifted. “Do you live in town?” Fine. “What’s your address?” Not fine. “Do you live alone?” ?????

That’s when the air changed. There are questions that belong in a gradual conversation. There are questions that don’t belong anywhere near a stranger. When someone asks for your address within minutes of meeting you, it isn’t curiosity. It’s boundary collapse and even threatening. And as the questions escalated, so did the proximity. I was on the seat closest to the wall – one of those corner spots that feels comfortable until it doesn’t. She kept inching forward. Chair scraping as she moved one chair closer every few seconds. Suddenly, she was less than a foot away, deep in my personal space. With the wall behind me, there was nowhere to lean back without making it obvious.

Your nervous system does a quiet scan: exits, distance, obstacles. It calculates before your brain finishes forming sentences. I became aware of how little physical space I had left. It mattered. Her eyes moved differently, too. Not just eye contact. She was scanning, evaluating, and lingering too long. The conversation wasn’t reciprocal. It was an extraction and I told her to move a couple of seats away because I felt crowded (and uneasy). Even if she were the most gorgeous woman on earth, I would have told her to back it up.

When she asked my name, I instinctively gave her a false first name and no last name – but I had one prepared just in case. She left soon after, and even the staff commented on the strange encounter, saying she had creeped them out.

Later, I remembered reading that the average person unknowingly encounters a dozen or more murderers in their lifetime. Who knows if that number is even accurate. It doesn’t matter. The point isn’t that she was dangerous. The point is that statistically, not everyone who makes you uncomfortable is harmless.

When the Identity (Almost) Breaks

About a year after I was downsized – still deep in the heart of COVID, with lockdowns and stay-at-home orders unless necessary – I took a job delivering refurbished goods to surplus stores. Sales and delivery. Boxes in the back of a truck. Routes. Invoices. Inventory.

On paper, it was practical. Income is income. Pride doesn’t pay the bills, and the whole world was in a prolonged slowdown, which may have come at a good time because I noticed how burned out I was. Within two days, however, something in me felt off.

I remember driving between stops thinking, What am I doing? Not in a snobbish way. Not in a “this is beneath me” way. In a disoriented way. For years, I had introduced myself as a writer. A communications professional and a storyteller. My work identity was built around words, ideas, deadlines, research projects, interviews, and bylines. Even when freelance life was unstable, the core identity held.

Now I was hauling refurbished merchandise into the back rooms of surplus stores. And it felt like the end of something. It didn’t help that the boss was abusive and volatile – the kind of personality that quickly erodes confidence. But the real issue wasn’t him. It was the internal narrative that had quietly taken hold: Maybe this is it now. Maybe the writing career is over, and I’d better accept it.

That thought is heavier in your fifties than it is at 30. At 30, you assume there’s another act. In your fifties, you start wondering about a lot of things.

Within three days, I quit. From the outside, it might look impulsive. Financially risky – even with plenty of my downsizing package nicely tucked away and a government program that paid out a monthly amount to keep everyone going who was downsized because of COVID.

What I now recognize is that I wasn’t quitting a job. I was fighting for an identity.

When you’ve built most of your adult life around a skill, a role, a profession – it isn’t just income. It’s how you locate yourself in the world. It’s how you measure worth. It’s how you answer the question, “What do you do?” Take that away, and something destabilizes.

That’s the quiet midlife crisis nobody prepares you for: The identity vacuum.

You wake up one day and realize the label you’ve worn for 30 years has been peeled off. You’re standing there with experience, memory, and muscle memory, but no clear category.

Who are you when the title disappears? Some people cling to the old version and pretend nothing changed. Some settle into whatever pays the bills and quietly shrink, while others go through something uglier – an ego death.

You have to separate who you are from what you did. And that is easier said than done. For me, quitting that job wasn’t about pride. It was about refusing to internalize the idea that the writer was gone. The times were uncertain, and no one knew how long the COVID crisis would last. The pandemic had scrambled everything.

But the identity wasn’t dead. It was bruised, though. There’s a difference. A lot of people in the 55–65 range are going through this, whether they admit it or not. Careers peak and fade. Industries shrink, and companies downsize. Our bodies age. Relevance shifts.

And underneath it all is the same question: If I’m not that anymore… what am I?

The rebuild isn’t about income first. It’s about identity reconstruction. And sometimes, you have to walk away from something quickly – even something practical because staying would confirm a story about yourself that isn’t true. The collapse wasn’t the job; it was believing I was finished. That turned out to be untrue.

The Slow Acceptance That Not Every Hour Has to Be Productive

There’s a particular kind of guilt that showed with me around three in the afternoon. It slides into my brain and asks, quietly, “What have you accomplished lately?” And I can feel the low flame of my brain flickering instead of roaring.

For years, I would have fought this hour. I would have forced something. Another paragraph, blog entry, or another idea squeezed out like the last bit of toothpaste from a nearly empty tube. Somewhere along the way, I absorbed the idea that every hour must justify itself, because the clock is a scoreboard and I must keep scoring points every minute until 5 p.m., or later, five days a week. But there’s something humbling about an afternoon that simply refuses to cooperate.

I’ve written about this before, but we live in a culture that treats productivity like oxygen. If you’re not producing, optimizing, building, growing, or improving, you must be slipping. Rest feels suspicious and stillness feels lazy. An unremarkable hour feels like a missed opportunity.

But what if it’s not? What if it’s just an hour?

There’s something quietly liberating about watching the minutes move and realizing that nothing dramatic needs to happen. The world does not tilt because you didn’t maximize 2:47 p.m. The sun doesn’t dim because you paused. The inbox doesn’t explode because you let your mind idle for twenty minutes or even an hour.

Sometimes, the most productive thing an hour can do is pass.

As I sit in this coffee shop working, I look around and notice something: not everyone here is racing toward something. The older man by the window is stirring his coffee long after the sugar has dissolved and staring out at the lake. The couple in the corner isn’t negotiating contracts; they’re talking about what to make for dinner. The woman near the door scrolls slowly, unhurried, occasionally smiling at something unseen.

No one looks like they’re trying to win the day. And yet the day continues. Maybe that’s part of small-town life. I knew several people here already when I moved – they live near one of the other lakes, within a short drive of here. And I’ve gotten to know many more here. What I’ve heard is that most of them escaped the rat race of big city life. They work, but either remotely or by starting a business they enjoy that pays the bills. No one seems to be in a hurry here.

I used to believe that momentum had to be constant or it would disappear. That if I let up, even slightly, everything I was building would unravel. But that belief is exhausting. It turns afternoons into adversaries and life into a checklist.

Some hours are for deep work, and some are for progress and maybe a breakthrough or two. A good chunk of my work is research and interpretation of that research is something I bill for. I have an insatiable thirst for knowledge and understanding, so, like my writing – which I love – research doesn’t feel like work.

Yet, there’s a dignity in allowing a low-energy hour to exist without punishment. It doesn’t mean ambition has vanished or that discipline has eroded. It just means the human machine isn’t designed to run at full throttle without consequence.

Even athletes have recovery days and seasons have winter. The slow acceptance that not every hour has to be productive doesn’t arrive all at once. It seeps in gradually, like afternoon light shifting across the floor. You stop fighting it. You stop narrating it as a failure. You let the lull be what it is – a lull. And maybe that is where I have changed over the last several months. And, after all, at my age, isn’t this what I wanted? A slower pace.

Not squeezing real or perceived value from every second, but understanding that life is not a factory line. It’s ebb and flow. It’s sprints and pauses. Sure, the clock keeps moving no matter what you do but I’ve learned that sitting still is not losing or time that has to be made up.

Thurmond, West Virginia – The Trains Still Pass Through

Continuing my occasional travel memory blog entries: Thurmond, West Virginia, felt like walking into a paused sentence. The buildings still stand in a straight line along the railroad tracks, their wooden facades facing forward as if waiting for something. But the motion that once defined the town is gone. Its population is five people. Yes, five.

At its peak in the early 1900s, Thurmond was a thriving coal town along the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway. Coal moved through here by the ton. Money moved through here, too. Hotels, banks, storefronts, and boarding houses – they weren’t decorative or nostalgic. They were necessary. Men in work boots filled the streets and the saloons were loud. The depot was busy. Now the streets are quiet enough that you can hear your own footsteps.

The depot still sits beside the tracks, dignified and simple. The rails remain active, which makes the stillness even stranger. A freight train can thunder through without stopping, shaking the ground and rattling the windows before disappearing into the gorge as quickly as it arrived. For a few seconds, the town feels alive again – then the sound fades, and the silence returns even heavier than before.

I stood on the wooden boardwalk and tried to picture it full: coal dust in the air, steam rising from locomotives, the scrape of boots on planks, the murmur of transactions and gossip. It’s hard to reconcile that image with what’s there now: faded paint, sagging porches, darkened windows that reflect only sky and trees.

Weeds push up through cracks and moss creeps along foundations. Trees lean in from the hillside. The forest inches forward quietly, season by season, reclaiming ground that industry once cleared with urgency and confidence.

What struck me most wasn’t the decay itself. It was the ordinariness of what once existed here. These weren’t grand mansions or architectural landmarks. They were functional buildings tied to paychecks and groceries, and to ordinary afternoons when the breadwinner deposited earnings at that bank, someone waited for a train with a suitcase and nervous hope, a clerk stood behind a counter selling supplies to miners coming off a shift, and a family raised children within sight of those tracks.

Where did they go when coal production slowed and the economics shifted? When the railroad no longer needed a town here? Did they move to Charleston? To Ohio? Did their grandchildren scatter across the country, carrying only a faint story about a place called Thurmond that had once mattered?

There’s a specific kind of sadness in industrial towns that fade and it fascinates me. It isn’t an explosive tragedy. It’s erosion. The slow realization that the backbone of a community – the mine, the mill, the factory – is not eternal. When the work leaves, the people follow. What remains are shells that once held daily life.

And yet there is something quietly respectful about Thurmond’s current state. It hasn’t been bulldozed into parking lots. It’s a designated national historic district.

I found myself imagining the interior rooms and sunlight cutting through dust, floorboards creaking under boots, ledger books filled with careful handwriting. The human details are what linger in your mind, not the peeling paint.

A town like Thurmond forces you to confront impermanence. Industries feel permanent when they dominate a landscape. Coal shaped West Virginia for generations. Railroads carved through mountains and seemed unstoppable. But permanence often turns out to be just a long season. The trains still pass through Thurmond. You can hear them coming from miles away. They roar across the tracks and vanish into the hills without slowing. The town remains standing, but it is no longer a destination. It is something trains move past.

Driving away, I kept thinking about the people who must have believed this place would last forever. They built homes here and opened businesses. They could not have imagined visitors decades later walking quietly down their street, wondering about them.

Exploring Mississippi’s Legendary Crossroads

Continuing my travel journal: Not far from Money, Mississippi – just a short drive across the same flat Delta landscape – I found myself chasing a very different ghost.

Where Money carries the weight of documented history, the Delta’s crossroads carry myth. Somewhere near the intersection of Highways 61 and 49 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, the story goes, Robert Johnson met the devil and traded his soul for brilliance on the guitar.

I arrived expecting something cinematic. What I found was an ordinary intersection with asphalt, traffic lights, and passing cars. Nothing theatrical. In a sense, it was just another crossing of two roads under an enormous Mississippi sky. And yet the ordinariness is what unsettles you.

Because this isn’t the only place that claims the legend. Some insist the real crossroads lies near Highways 1 and 8 in Rosedale, Mississippi. Others point toward Dockery Farms, Mississippi, near Cleveland – often called the birthplace of Delta blues – suggesting the story belongs less to a traffic signal and more to the soil itself. There are even whispers of other intersections scattered across the Delta.

Four possible crossroads. Which somehow makes the myth feel stronger, not weaker.

I drove toward Dockery Farms on a long, nearly empty stretch of highway. The fields flanked both sides of the road, flat and open, with nothing to interrupt the horizon. The sky felt oversized, pressing down in a way that was more atmospheric than physical. There were moments when I realized I hadn’t seen another car for miles.

That kind of emptiness does something to your imagination – and not always in a good way. The drive toward Highways 1 and 8 near Rosedale felt similar – quiet, slow, almost ominous in its stillness. No dramatic buildup. No soundtrack. Just wind brushing over farmland and the hum of tires on pavement. If someone had stepped out of the tree line at dusk, it wouldn’t have felt impossible.

Standing at one of those intersections, I couldn’t help thinking of the movie Crossroads – that quiet, chilling moment when the devil appears out of nowhere and says, “Been a long time, hasn’t it Willie. Yes, sir, been a long time.” There’s no lightning or fire. Just a calm, measured voice under an open sky.

In the Delta, that kind of arrival doesn’t feel far-fetched.

The land is so open, so stripped of distraction, that something supernatural almost feels plausible. Crossroads in folklore have always symbolized choice, destiny, and encounters with forces beyond understanding. In this geography, the symbolism feels amplified. The roads stretch straight and flat in every direction. Nothing hides and yet everything feels layered.

Whether Robert Johnson ever stood at any one of these exact intersections is almost beside the point. The transformation in his music was real. The myth grew because people needed an explanation that matched the sound – something grand enough, dark enough, mysterious enough.

The Delta doesn’t resist that explanation. It almost invites it.

Just miles from where documented injustice unfolded in Money and near the site of the barn where unimaginable cruelty occurred, another story took root – one about talent, sacrifice, and the price of genius. Fact and folklore live side by side here without contradiction. Sorrow and song share the same soil.

I lingered longer than I expected at each of the crossroads and even thought of going back to the isolated ones well after dark, but figured I would probably creep myself out as my imagination ran wild. Nothing supernatural happened but my imagination sure was jumping during those daylight visits – especially at the quieter ones. And maybe that was exactly right. Legends don’t perform on cue. They hover quietly, waiting for someone willing to stand still long enough to feel them.

Driving away and back to my hotel, I realized the multiple claimed crossroads don’t dilute the story – they spread it. The legend isn’t pinned to one corner of asphalt. It drifts across farmland, highways, and memory. It belongs to the atmosphere more than the coordinates.

Mississippi doesn’t curate its stories neatly. It lets them breathe and haunt.

And somewhere between Money, Dockery Farms, Rosedale, and Clarksdale – between injustice and imagination – the Delta quietly reminds you that its past doesn’t sit politely in museums.

A Visit To Money, Mississippi

Some places one visits hum with energy and life. Others feel as though they breathe through memory alone.

I had read about the town for years because of the tragic story of Emmett Till, but reading about history and standing inside it are two entirely different experiences. Driving toward Money several years ago felt less like a simple travel stop and more like crossing an invisible line between present and past. The closer I got, the quieter everything became.

The Mississippi Delta opened into wide, flat farmland that stretched endlessly in every direction, giving the unsettling impression that time had slowed or perhaps stalled altogether. The isolation struck me immediately. Money didn’t just feel rural – it felt hidden, as if the land itself had decided to keep its stories protected behind miles of open fields and silent roads.

I remember tightening my grip on the steering wheel as I approached the infamous location. There was tension building in my chest and gut, an uneasy awareness that I was about to step into a place tied to one of the most painful and defining moments in American history. It wasn’t fear, but it wasn’t comfort either. It felt like walking toward a memory that still carried weight, still carried sorrow, and still carried consequences that had never fully settled.

When I arrived at what remains of Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market, the emotional atmosphere shifted even further.

Calling it a building feels almost misleading. What stood there resembled a fragile skeleton of wood, brick, and memory – weathered by decades of heat, storms, and time slowly reclaiming what once stood intact. The structure was quietly surrendering to nature, while other parts seem stubbornly determined to remain, as if history itself refuses to allow complete disappearance.

I parked and stepped out of the car, and the stillness was immediate and overwhelming. There were no crowds or tour buses. No commercialization attempts to package tragedy into something digestible. Just wind brushing across the fields and the faint rustling of grass and leaves. The silence felt sacred, but it also felt heavy in a way that settled deep in my chest. Curiously, I felt like I was doing something wrong and that if a local saw me, they would tell me to leave and to let the history die.

Standing there, it was impossible not to think about the events that unfolded after Till, a fourteen-year-old visiting from Chicago, walked into that store in 1955. His murder would become a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement, but standing on that ground stripped away historical summaries and timelines. It became intensely human. It became about a young life cut short, about grief that spread across a family and eventually across a nation, and about the uncomfortable reality that some wounds never truly close – or can’t close.

Some thirty miles away, I drove toward another site connected to the tragedy – the location of the barn in Drew where Till was brutally beaten and tortured before his murder. The drive there felt even heavier. The farmland stretched in the same quiet way, but now each passing mile felt like traveling deeper into a story that grows darker the closer you get to its center.

When I reached the barn, the stillness felt different from the store. The site didn’t just carry history – it carried a sense of unbearable weight, and I felt a pit in my stomach. And yes, tears came to my eyes. It was one of the rare moments in travel where curiosity disappears completely and is replaced by reflection.

Returning slowly toward Money, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the land itself carried memory. It felt as though stepping onto that soil stirred echoes that had never completely faded – voices, fear, anger, heartbreak. There was a lingering awareness that for some, this history might feel like something better left unspoken, buried beneath generations of silence and discomfort.

While I stood near the store the first time, another car had slowly pulled into the gravel nearby. A couple stepped out, looking around with the same cautious curiosity I had felt before. We didn’t speak beyond a brief nod, but the acknowledgement brought unexpected comfort. There was reassurance in knowing I wasn’t alone in trying to understand, remember, and pay quiet respect to a place that carries such immense historical weight. It felt like a shared moment of witnessing, even without conversation.

Leaving Money felt far different from arriving. The tension I carried into the town didn’t disappear, but it softened into reflection. The fields and empty roads looked exactly the same as they had when I arrived, yet something inside me had shifted. I realized that some places are not meant to entertain or inspire in the traditional sense. Some places exist to confront you with truth – raw, uncomfortable, and necessary.

As I drove away, I found myself glancing back through the rearview mirror longer than usual, as if part of me wasn’t ready to let the place disappear behind the horizon. There was a quiet realization that visiting historical sites is not simply about learning facts or checking landmarks off a travel list. It is about standing in spaces where human pain once unfolded and allowing yourself to feel its weight without distraction or denial.

Money is barely a blip on a map and not a place that welcomes you with fanfare. Instead, it offers silence – and in that silence, it asks something of you. It asks you to reflect. It asks you to acknowledge that the past is never truly past, especially in places where injustice once walked openly under the same sky.

Long after the place disappeared from view, the stillness followed me. I realized that the ghosts I had quietly feared awakening were never confined to that small patch of Mississippi Delta land. They travel with anyone willing to listen. They linger in thoughts, in questions, and in the quiet moments when history stops feeling distant and starts feeling painfully personal.

And as miles stretched between Money and me, I understood something I hadn’t expected when I began that drive: some places do not want to be visited for closure. Some places exist so that closure never fully arrives – because remembering, however uncomfortable, may be the only way history continues to speak, and the only way we continue to listen.

Why Regulars Don’t Want to Be Your Music Consultant

There’s a certain unspoken contract when you’re a regular at a hangout. You show up. You’re polite, and you tip well. You don’t ask for favors but it’s nice when someone goes out of their way for you because you are a regular. You don’t make anyone’s job harder than it needs to be. You sit quietly with your coffee, maybe a notebook and a phone, maybe just your thoughts. You blend into the background like a piece of furniture that happens to order refills.

Which is why it always catches me off guard when a server wanders over and treats me like the human version of Google, Shazam, Spotify Premium, and a universal remote rolled into one. “Who is this?” “What song is this?” “Can you Shazam it?”

Let’s pause right there.

First of all, I’m sitting here quietly having a coffee. I’m not DJ’ing. I’m not curating the playlist and I didn’t ask for a pop quiz. I’m not leaning back in my chair nodding along like some kind of resident music expert. I’m just sitting here with my thoughts and jotting down a few things.

Second, it’s not even busy. Which means you absolutely have time to do what you’re asking me to do. You have a phone. You have Shazam. In fact, I’m confident your phone can handle identifying a three-minute song playing through ceiling speakers.

Third – and this is where expectations really need to be managed – I don’t know who 90 percent of the artists are who made it big in the last 25 years. I missed the boat. It sailed without me. Yes, I have heard of Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, and Jelly Roll, but I’ve never listened to a full song by any of them. Somewhere between the late ’90s and the streaming era, popular music became a parallel universe I visit accidentally while waiting for a refill. If the song came out after flip phones died, there’s a strong chance I’ve never heard of the artist, and an even stronger chance I don’t care enough to find out.

So when you ask, “Who is this?” and I shrug, that’s not me being mysterious. That’s me being honest. Then there’s the follow-up request. “Can you skip the ads?” No, I cannot.

For one thing, skipping ads is literally part of the job description. That’s like asking a customer to run food or bus a table because the place is busy. Also, I’m not paying attention. I’ve tuned the music out entirely. It exists as ambient noise: like clinking mugs or the espresso machine hissing in the background.

And even if I were paying attention, I have no idea how your setup works. There are four remotes sitting there. Four.

Each one looks like it controls either the TV, the sound system, the satellite feed, or possibly a time machine. I don’t know which is which. I don’t know which one skips ads, which one changes inputs, or which one accidentally shuts everything off and requires a manager override. Yet somehow, I’m expected to know.

This is where the universal remote conversation needs to happen. Preferably before involving me. Because once you ask me to fix the music, identify the song, skip the ads, and troubleshoot the electronics, we’ve crossed a line. I’ve gone from “regular customer” to “unpaid consultant.” And I did not bring my consulting rates with me today and you probably couldn’t afford them anyway.

There’s also something subtly exhausting about being asked questions you didn’t volunteer to answer. It breaks the bubble. The whole point of sitting alone in a familiar place is the invisibility. The comfort of not being “on.” When you ask me to Shazam something, I’m suddenly responsible for your curiosity, your boredom, and your lack of initiative. And I don’t want that responsibility. I just want my coffee.

So here’s a gentle, unspoken rule suggestion: if you’re working, and you’re curious about the music, use the tools already in your pocket. If there are ads, skip them yourself. If the remotes are confusing, that’s a system problem, not a customer problem.

And if you see a regular sitting quietly, staring into space, maybe let them stay in their zone until they need a refill. They didn’t come in to be tech support. They came in to disappear for a while.

Where Does It Say I Have to Respond on Your Timetable?

Somewhere along the way, we quietly rewrote the rules of availability. I’m talking about outside of work, though, in a way, it can apply to work.

Not in a meeting. Not in a handbook. Not even in a conversation anyone remembers agreeing to. It just sort of happened. If you have a phone, you’re reachable. If you’re reachable, you’re expected to respond. And if you don’t respond quickly enough, something must be wrong. Or worse – what is your problem?

What I can’t seem to find, though, is the rulebook that says I’m required to respond according to your timetable. Yes, there’s a loose modern etiquette that suggests responding to a text within an hour is “polite.” Fine. I get that. But when did etiquette become a one-way street? When did courtesy stop including the basic awareness that other people have lives that don’t revolve around your needs, curiosities, or boredom?

Because that part seems to have quietly disappeared. I grew up learning how to do things for myself. If I needed information, I looked it up. If I had a small problem, I solved it. Asking for help wasn’t forbidden, but it wasn’t the default setting either. It was something you did when it actually mattered – not because it was convenient.

Today, the threshold for interruption is astonishingly low. Asking for song titles, or just three random texts in quick succession that essentially say nothing: all of it delivered with the assumption that I’m on standby and checking my phone every four minutes. You can’t remember the title of a song but remember a few lyrics? Type those into a search and the song title will pop up.

Once, after someone bombarded me with texts for the fifth day in a row about nothing, and then wondered why I wasn’t replying, I finally answered with what felt like a mild explosion: “Did it occur to you I turned my phone off because I was on vacation and didn’t want to be disturbed?” Harsh? Maybe. But this was a relative who was clingy – or was it disturbed and regularly wanting to know my whereabouts even though they lived a long way away. Goodness, we were fine not communicating for months before communication technology became ubiquitous.

The idea that turning your phone off requires justification is a relatively new and deeply strange development. Silence used to mean someone was busy, unavailable, or simply not home. Now it’s treated like a social malfunction. An unanswered text triggers concern, irritation, or passive-aggressive follow-ups – not because the message was urgent, but because access was assumed. And that’s the real issue: assumed access. Having the ability to reach someone does not entitle you to their attention. Being reachable does not mean being available. Yet many people now behave as if those distinctions don’t exist.

What’s especially exhausting is how quickly availability turns into expectation. If you respond a few times promptly, that becomes the new baseline. Any deviation from it feels, to the other person, like a slight – even though nothing was promised in the first place. It’s not malicious most of the time. It’s just thoughtless. People send messages when they have a moment, without stopping to consider whether the person on the other end might not. And when there’s a delay, the focus isn’t on respecting that person’s time – it’s on their own unmet expectation.

This mindset shows up everywhere: friends, family, etc. The medium changes, but the assumption stays the same. If you don’t respond quickly, you’re unreliable and difficult. Unavailable in a way that needs explaining. But availability is not a moral virtue. Being constantly reachable doesn’t make you considerate. It makes you interruptible. And while responsiveness is useful in certain contexts – emergencies, time-sensitive work – most of what pings our phones doesn’t fall into that category.

A text is not a summons or an obligation. Silence is not disrespect.

If anything, there’s an etiquette we rarely talk about anymore: the courtesy of not assuming immediate access to someone else’s life. The courtesy of understanding that your message enters someone else’s day, not the other way around.

Turning your phone off for a few hours or days (on vacation, for example) shouldn’t be an act of rebellion. It should be normal. So should delayed replies. So should the understanding that people have boundaries – even quiet ones they don’t announce. I’m not advocating for disappearing entirely or ignoring people indefinitely. I’m advocating for balance. For a return to the idea that communication is mutual, not on-demand.

Because the real question isn’t why didn’t you respond sooner? It’s this: When did we decide that everyone else’s time belonged to us just because we could reach them?

Until we answer that, the pressure to always be “on” will keep growing – and the simple act of living uninterrupted will keep feeling like something we need to apologize for.