Welcome to the Perceived Passage of Time

 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.

Welcome to the Speed of Time

Do you guys remember a time when it felt like the school year would never end? Or when summer vacation seemed to last forever and a day? Does it sometimes feel time is now slipping away faster and faster than it did a decade ago?

Apparently this weird shift in how we perceive time isn't unusual as we age. Scientists seem to think its because our brains prioritizes new memories rather than familiar ones, which makes it seem like our childhood lasted a lot longer than a decade as an adult does.

The sense of loosing time is usually accompanied by a the feelings of regret, melancholy, and the idea that there might be missing. I also start to feel the weight of my mortality.

I'm not old. In the description of this blog, it says that I was somewhere in my twenties, at least when I started it. I'll let you guys speculate on my actual age, but it's not like I've "aged" that. What's five years to someone who has graduated college and ventured forth on their own?

This year is the sixth anniversary since the start of a show called Gravity Falls. It was a fun show on one of the Disney channels about two kids spending a summer with their Great Uncle in the middle of no where Oregon. The creator of the show always knew how it would end and that the story would only encompass one summer. The finale was shown three years ago and it lived up to my expectations.

I think you can still watch it on Hulu.

The reason I bring up this show is because the creator explicitly stated that it was inspired by his own summer vacations with his twin sister. He recalls feeling that summers felt endless and that they would be kids forever.

But nothing lasts forever and all things come to an end.

Just like the creator's summer did. Just like the summer Mable and Dipper Pines had in Gravity Falls (that was also the name of the town the show took place in).

I think that's why I get so sad sometimes. It happens when I realize how long it's been since a major life event happened or an enjoyable tradition ended. Around this time last year, I went to the beach with my mom, sister, and aunt. We used to go every year for two weeks at the end of August to this town in Southern New Jersey. I have very fond memories from this time and occasionally I like to pretend that it's still the 90s or early 2000s. But the reality is that we haven't consistently gone to this beach for at least 12(?), 15(?) years old - well it's been over a decade at least.

These are days where it makes me really sad that I can never go back to those times. It's not the same anymore. Somethings seem to be the same, but I can see where time has taken it's toll. Faded paint on the mini golf course, a new store where the ice cream parlor used to be, and the rides on the boardwalk are a lot smaller than when I was six.

Those exact moments only exist in my memories now.

Memories, though, aren't always a guarantee. There are diseases that can wipe out our fondest memories and others that prevent us from creating new ones. I like to try and record what I can, if for no other reason than writing helps me process the things going on in my life. Most I keep private, but some I share on social media and in my blog posts.

Recently, a cousin of mine passed away. Part of me didn't feel it was real until I attended her memorial service. It felt like I was talking to her not all that long ago, promising to see her again at our next family reunion. Then I remembered that that conversation had happened at my family reunion last August. Part of me still feels like I'll see my cousin in just a couple months.

Though it's been over a decade, I still sometimes hear my grandparent's laughter. I can close my eyes and explore the houses I grew up in, even when I haven't been there in years. They're very clear memories and they don't feel like they happened as long ago as they actually did.

I can only hope to create more memories of the new moments in my life and break away from my day-to-day routine whenever I can. I want to have adventures, see the world, and try everything that I can. I want to build memories and fill my life with lots of stories.

Keeping memories is a lot like writing a novel. We only keep the ones that are important to the story we want to tell. We cut out the mundane, ignore the routine, and exaggerate the awesome.

I hope that when I finish writing my story, it's one that's worth remembering.

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 you guys like hearing from me.

Until next week.

Welcome to the Holiday Blues

Christmas is supposed to be "the most wonderful time of the year." At least that's what the radio, movies, advertisements, and the media keep telling me. It's a time to spend with family and friends. To share and create memories.

So how come I've been feeling so down?

I'm not going to lie. I cried almost every day this week. It seems silly right?

Part of me was realizing that I needed to upgrade my tech and how pretty soon, everything I own will become obsolete. This should have been an obvious realization. After all, change seems to be the only constant in my life. Anyone who has ever seen an ad for Radio Shack from the 90s knows that everything they used to sell individually is available in a smartphone and/or laptop.

Did you guys know that the last VHS player was built in Japan this year? Yeah, VHS is pretty much gone know. If you have a bunch of home movies, you might want to consider making digital copies. Apple is ditching the analog headphones with their latest iPhone. DVDs players are become less common. Not to mention that kids today have no idea what a floppy disk is (they just think it's a universal symbol for "save").

I think the reason I'm so sensitive to all these changes is because I'm finally realizing how quickly time goes by when I'm not paying attention. I didn't realize until very recently that my loyal laptop from college was pushing seven years. It still works, but it's definitely having issues.

Ten years no long seems like a long time. When I was 15, I felt completely different from how I was at the age of 5. I can't say the same thing about looking back at my teens from my mid-twenties. I think a part of me realizes how much time has passed. I've grown a lot since I graduated college and even more since I graduated high school.

It probably doesn't help that I'm still constantly being mistaken as a teenager.


Feeling down at this time of year is not unusual. Between mass consumerism and realizing how much time has passed since you last had the time to take a breather. Time seemed endless as a kid. I felt like I had all the time in the world. I thought I could do anything and everything.

While setting up my Christmas decorations and cleaning my apartment, I found some of my old journals. I started rereading some of them. There's a lot of bad spelling and I had horrible handwriting, but it was interesting to see my inner thoughts as an 11 year old. I mostly wrote about food (go figure right).

As much as I would love to go back and relive all the good times and visit with friends and family who have passed away, I can't. I can only move forward. It's tough to let go of things and sometimes I've just got to accept the feelings I feel (crying and all) and be thankful for what is happening in the present.

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 you guys like hearing from me. Until next week...which also happens to be Christmas.

Welcome To A New Year

I know I'm a day late on posting again...oops. I think I can be forgiven for forgetting which day of the week it is since it's the Holidays here.

As we draw to the end of 2014, I realize that time has really flown this year. Though it's not the New Year yet, I wanted to take some time to reflect. A lot of things happen in a year, especially the ones that fly by. It's funny how that happens.

I did a lot of traveling to Hawaii, Disney World, and San Diego and a few smaller side trips for work. I wouldn't say any of those trips were my favorite because they were all a lot of fun and I got to do a lot of things. (It's a rare thing to say I went to both Disney World and Disneyland in the same year).

I feel I worked hard at my job and that I'm learning a lot. I hope to continue to learn and improve.

I finally started making new friends. I joined an anime club at the local library (libraries are seriously the best place to go) and played softball throughout the summer with the church I started going to). I found that making new friends outside of a school setting is a lot harder than most people would think. I'm glad I did.

My biggest (or at least the one I'm most proud of and might have mentioned one or twice...about a million times)  accomplishment was finishing the first draft of a novel. I'm hoping to start the rewrite in January. Maybe I'll start sending it to agents this year.

Though my post might have gotten away from the original purpose (giving advice on how to survive the college to real world transition to what have I managed to do this time and not set myself on fire), I have managed to keep up with posting once a week. Maybe I have inspired others to write weekly as well (or not, let's not inflate my own ego there)? Still, I find it amazing I've lasted this long. Feel free to give suggestions on what you guys would like to hear about.

Now what about next year?

I don't know. The future is such a mystery. I try to make plans, but somehow or other they always end up changed along the way. I'd love to keep traveling and going on adventures. I hope to do more things with my friends (new and old). Maybe I'll start rock climbing this year. I have a comic I've been working on, perhaps I'll post it online (under my internet name of course).

As for my resolution for the new year? I'll put my self down for getting to that 2nd and possibly that 3rd draft to start sending out. I might even start another novel in between (here's to doing and not hoping).

Once again I leave you guys with an image of my loyal Christmas tree since I don't have to take it down until the 6th of January.

Here's wishing you guys a Happy New Year. Can't wait to see you then!

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and hope someone out there is learning from my random (and occasionally brilliant or really silly) delisions. Until the next year.