Time And Tide Wait For No Man

Time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time. - T.S. Eliot
I recently wrote about all the ways one might go about wasting time on the job, and this quote from the author of "The Waste Land" makes all of that slacker behavior seem justified. My real problem is that I tend to obsess on filling my waking moments with activities that are more tangible and results-driven. It sometimes keeps me up at night. It tends to drive my blood pressure into less than favorable strata as well.
That is why reading about a new time travel device gave me pause. If we really could go back into the past, I could fill all those wasted moments, even those I spent reading the article about the time travel device and find some practical tasks to fill those voids. Time travel research is based on bending space-time so far that time lines actually turn back on themselves to form a loop. If you start to recognize the sounds and sensations of Doc Brown and his Flux Capacitor or Doctor Hasslein's Observed Time Line, then you have a sense of where this is headed. All we need to do is start manipulating gravitational fields, something akin to the way a black hole does.
What does that mean to the compulsive personality of August 21, 2007? Since there is presently no way to move gravity around in the way these scientists have described, we will all still have to wait. But until then, we can plot our trajectory. Since it is only possible to return to a place in time before the machine is built, you might consider starting your list with going back to the time it took you to make up the list of all the times you want to go back to - at least for now.
Stay tuned.