A Year in the Blink of an Eye

 Hey Earthlings!

Remember when time crawled by as a kid? When weeks seemed endless, and months stretched into eternity? If you're like me, those days are long gone. Now, I blink, and a month vanishes. A year? Gone in a flash. I've railed against this phenomenon before, even sharing strategies to slow things down in a post from about four years ago (here: Expanding Subjective Time). It seems like only yesterday when I wrote that ;).

But today, I'm taking a different approach. What if time speeding by isn't always a bad thing?

Take our current heatwave. With temperatures soaring to 100°F and a heat advisory in effect, the prospect of racing through to the rainy season doesn't seem so terrible.

Sun Dogs in Oregon

This perspective applies to all sorts of other things. When facing a work deadline a month or two away, there's a strange comfort in knowing it'll be here in short order. Yes, I'll still put in all the effort—and enjoy the process every time I come up with some new adventure wrinkle or rule—but the swift passage of time brings a certain confidence. I know that I'll make that deadline, and afterward, it'll seem like it took hardly any time at all.

The same goes for anticipated joys. Whether it's celebrating the completion of a project or looking forward to an upcoming trip, the knowledge that these events are just around the corner is heartening.

That's especially true when I'm sick or someone I'm close to is hurting. While it's tough in the moment, time will see that sickness healed or that difficulty overcome sooner than it feels. Sometimes, we just need to let time do its thing.

Of course, time won't "do its thing" if I decide to play video games all day. A hundred little daily tasks call out for completion—for work, home, and for my family and friends. By tracking these moments, savoring them, and reflecting on them, I could slow down my perception of time's passage...

But today? I'm eagerly anticipating 1 AM tomorrow when the temperature will mercifully drop below 70°F.

Interestingly, there's one thing that doesn't seem to be rushing by—the Patreon novel I'm writing. But hey, at least each scene I write gives me a chance to share some new insight or odd thought that's been tickling my brain with ya'll, which I cross-post here to my blog. Win-win, right?