Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

Living in motel rooms for a week detaches you from time. Not the kind you check on your wristwatch, but the kind that pervades your home.

Think about this: Your microwave tells time so that it can be programmed for an easy minute or popcorn’s required limit. Your coffee pot tells time so it can turn on automatically in the morning. Your oven tells time so you can pre-set it and forget it. Your television needs to know what time it is to record your favorite program while you’re out running around.

Then there’s your heating system with its programmable on and off feature, your cell phone, your alarm clock radio, your landscape lighting that goes on at dusk and off at midnight, and your sprinkler system that goes on at three in the morning and off at six.

There’s also your car’s interior lights that are timed to enable you to reach the safety of your home before they go dark, your security system that provides seconds before alerting that you might be an intruder, your heated floors that go on at six in the morning and off after you’ve showered, your computers (although they never have the right time), and, more than likely, your fancy wrist watch.

Yet, when you’re camping in a motel far from home, you don’t think of all these time-oriented accessories. Rather you get up in the morning and fill the coffee pot in your room, you manually adjust the heating and cooling system, and you don’t even consider programming your rented-for-the-night TV so as not to miss a program while you’re out dining. Giving up your dependence on schedules and timing, you return to an earlier era and probably are not even aware of it.

Kind of makes you wonder what the definition of progress really is.