I admit that I've been a little MIA the past month. I swear I have a good reason, but since I don't have to share the details of my life online, I'm not going to explain myself.
Okay - maybe I'll explain myself a smidge.
I lost track of time. So complain in my comments section.
As I've gotten older, I've realized how precious a resource time is. Much like the money I earn (and then spend), I have to budget my time. I may want to go to bed after midnight, but if I have an 8:00AM meeting, I'm going to be regretting that time I didn't spend sleeping.
Yesterday, I felt like I had all the time I needed this weekend to get everything I wanted to done. I took my time cleaning parts of my apartment and took a very long walk around the neighborhood. Today, as I write this blog post, I notice that I do not in fact have as much time as I wanted. I'm behind on the amount of cleaning and writing I'd hoped to do.
I still did a lot of stuff. My apartment is relatively clean, I was able to take some time to socialize, and I even managed a lovely 1-hour nap (nap time becomes cool again sometime in college - no lies). However, I didn't get all the chores I wanted to done and the only thing I've written is this blog post (which you are now reading).
Where did the time go? Why did it slip through my fingers like ocean waves?
Why is it that the moments I want to hold onto most, fly away the quickest?
I know there's a term for this phenomena, but I'm too lazy lacking the time to look it up. However, I've heard plenty of people complain about how quickly time flies. I've listened to people older (and occasionally wiser) than me inform me that time speeds up as you age.
But how? Physics has taught me that time is a fixed unit...unless relativity is involved. Did I gain so much mass that I'm able to perceive time differently from when I was a child. Or is this a psychological phenomenon connected to the Fibonacci sequence of age? When I'm two years old, half my live happened in one year. So I feel like a year is forever. As a six year old, a month seemed forever because one month was 1% of my life experience? Now a month is less than 0.3% of my life and seems to go by like a NASCAR loop.
I first began to note the passage of time, after my friend's 13th birthday party. I distinctly remember the party - only because I fell asleep first and was the first person to wake up in the morning (boy do I miss being able to do that - my college years really messed up my sleep schedule). I also distinctly remember thinking about the party a week later and wondering why it felt like time had passed so fast.
Then another week passed...and another.
Suddenly, it was a whole month from my friend's birthday party and I felt like I was feeling time go by. It was a disorienting feeling - one I still get when I want to revisit a very specific memory (usually happy, usually very detailed).
The best way I can describe the feeling of time passing is trying to stay very still while also being pulled by an invisible force hard enough that I can feel my body losing the battle to stay planted in one spot. The closest examples I could give are feeling a powerful tide going out to see or being on one of those UFO carnival rides - you feel the force moving you, but are stuck against the wall.
I don't know if anyone else has felt this. Most people I've spoken to talk about blinking and suddenly time has leapt forward - your little baby is a sassy preteen. I don't have kids. I blinked and went from living in Maryland to New Jersey. Another blink, and I'm back in my home state of Virginia. I'm curious where this next blink finds me, but I'm also weary.
I don't want time to slip by too fast, yet it seems to be. In another ten years, a month will be roughly 0.2% of my lived life. More events will have happened, more milestones met. A lot can change in ten years, and just as much can stay the same. I rarely noticed my growth spurts as a little kid, but my relatives who rarely saw me certainly did.
I've started having that realization too. The kids I babysat as a teen are graduating high-school and college. Some have even become parents themselves. My youngest first cousin is in university and my oldest second cousin once removed is in high-school (I missed out on his whole childhood). Places in my head exist as they did years ago, not as they do today because I haven't been there in so long. When I picture my grandparent's house, it's forever yellow, though the family that lives there now painted it brown.
Time is not a constant. Our perception of time changes with age. For some of us it's a blink. For others, it's a pull that we notice while trying to live in a moment - until that moment is a new one.
I am excited for the future. I enjoy reviewing the past, though I'm sad I can't return to those moments. I love being in the present, even if I sometimes start to mourn the moment because I know how quickly it's over.
Time is a currency. Time is a constant. Time changes with speed and mass. Humans can't control time anymore than we can control the weather.
If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y'all like hearing from me.
Until next week.
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