I Think My Watch is Fast
Why does time seem to move faster the older you get? I know I’m not the only one who has experienced this feeling. My grandmother and her friends used to talk about it often.
When I was little, five years was an inconceivable period of time. A year was like an eternity. A month felt like eons. A week took a century. A day was almost a lifetime. An hour felt like a season and a minute was just too long. Especially to wait.
Now, in my 50’s, five years seems to go by faster than the month of February. A year is over in less than a week. A month seems like just a few days. A week is really just a couple of hours. A day flies by before I can turn around. An hour is a breath and a minute is less than a blink. Unless I’m waiting. Then time goes back to the way it was when I was about 7. Funny how that works.
This time thing didn’t change overnight for me. There’s been a steady acceleration with each passing year. It just became noticeable once I hit 30. Makes me wonder how fast time will go by when I reach my 80’s, if I’m lucky to stay around that long.
I used to think that the acceleration was caused by the fact that my Demands List was fuller as a 30-something adult than when I was a child. With having so much to do it made the time just seem to go by faster. That was when I was working 12 hours a day and still trying to keep the house, the man, and the kid going. Now even though I’m a stay at home grandmother, time passing is still going faster, which sort of blows that hypothesis.
Another reason I’ve thought might cause this is, maybe, by the time we turn 30 or so, we’ve done so many things repeatedly throughout our lives that we don’t have any corresponding time memory of these actions. Those wonderful auto-pilot routine things like brushing our teeth, getting dressed, driving to work or whatever. When we are kids we fully acknowledge the time that it takes to do the routine things in life. As an adult there are days I can’t seem to remember if I did some of them or not. Except maybe getting dressed. Especially when it’s cold outside.
Is it caused by too much to do in a day? Is it just a perception thing? Physics, maybe? Possibly some weird, late night, Twilight Zone rerun thing? Or, is it that time really does fly when you’re having fun?
When you are not particularly looking forward to something, I have noticed that time flies and it works the opposite way too. I feel its all a matter of perception though
I’m sure it’s a matter of perception, but I like to believe that time flies when you’re having fun!
Time flies when I’m having fun, when I’m not having fun, when I’m busy as all get out, or when I’m sitting around doing absolutely nothing. It’s really annoying.