I don’t know why I’m always early to things. As someone who works in the arts and film industry, I was always taught while studying that “time is money.” Of course, this is a statement which means “get to the film set on time or early, otherwise we as a company will be forking out exuberantly unnecessary amounts of money to our crew and you’ll be considered a liability and never hired again.” I used to think that this was an exaggeration, but once you start doing the maths on big budget film sets, the numbers add up very quickly and it all makes sense.

  I know some people who are always late. Every single time. I don’t understand these people. To me it feels as though they don’t value time as much as they should. I mean, as an existentialist or optimistic nihilist, I believe that we should value every second that we have in our lives, so if someone says arrive at 3:30PM, then by (the) God(s?) I am going to do everything I can to arrive by 3:30PM, which usually involves me arriving there at 1:45PM.

  I’ve always wondered whether it’s cruel to tell people who are always late to things that the things start earlier than they do so they don’t miss the things. I haven’t tried this yet, because if the chronically late person turns up early for once, then now you’ve got this late person who is absurdly early for something and will a) feel betrayed that you lied to them because you don’t trust them to get somewhere on time; b) probably never care about being late ever again because they might assume in future that you are giving them an earlier start time and so they won’t care about rushing; and c) start telling you later start times for events to try and get you to understand how they feel – which is ridiculous because it’s so much more embarrassing to be late for something than it is to be early for something.

  Usually when I arrive somewhere early, I find the nearest piano and play – because for me, when I’m playing music, time doesn’t exist.