Time Slip

~ beetleypete

I have written a lot on this blog about how time seems to pass by much faster as you get older. Over the last eight years, each Wednesday seemed to appear two days earlier than I expected it to, and Christmas felt like it came around every three months.

Some individual days just fly by, even when I don’t have to go to work, and stick to a fairly regular routine. It often feels like I haven’t been up that long, and here I am at 6 pm starting to prepare dinner. I have to stand there and think back on what I have done. Blog posts, taking Ollie out for a couple of hours, maybe a drive into town, and a supermarket shop. I realise that it has actually been quite a long day, and I have been occupied for most of it.

But on the surface, it has felt like two hours, not ten.

Then it dawned on me today that it is still only just May. January seems a distant memory, as if it was two years ago, not five months. It has to be the unusual pressures of the coronavirus measures that have made 2020 seem like one of the slowest years I can remember since my childhood, but I have no real explanation as to why that has happened in my brain.

For the first time in a very long while, time has slowed down for me.

I rather like it like this.

44 thoughts on “Time Slip”

  2. I know what you mean, Pete. I’m not sure it’s all down to age, though. When you’re used to working and having a routine, I think in our head we imagine that we’ll have all that spare time once we don’t have a regular job (even if we work shifts, there is some sort of regularity), and we always end up taking on a lot of things and being, sometimes, even busier than before, just with other activities. But yes, this year is going to be one of the weirdest ones most people have ever known. Keep safe and have a good week.

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  3. Since I built my green house things have slowed down, probably as I check everything growing in it on a daily basis. Normally I just chuck stuff in t’field and before I know it its ready to eat 🙂

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  4. I have the same feeling, Pete. Rationally, I know that time is not going faster or slowing down. I’ve only been retired for three years, but time does seem like it’s moving quicker. My wife, who retired when I did, has the same feeling. April was one of the longest months of my life because of the virus. Even though I don’t want time to feel like it’s going faster, I think that will be a good sign that life has returned to normal again.

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  7. I am in agreement with you, Pete. It feels like the time speed from my youth when I had hours on end to daydream or ride my bike or whatever. Every day is now the same for me as if I went back in time. I will watch an hour or so of evening entertainment and drink for a couple of hours and play cards or listen to music. I walk an hour or two a day. The rest of the time I am either cleaning, cooking or working on novel 3.
    The only thing different is I’m not teaching at school! I imagine this is what retirement will be like. I can tell you I’m more relaxed and appreciate of the free time to create.

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  15. HiPete.Know how you feel. When you recall your first kisses, early birthdays, your earliest summer vacations, they seem to be in slow motion. I know when I look back on a childhood summer, it seems to have lasted forever; of course it didn’t. I think its when it’s the “first”, there are so many things to remember. The memories of first time events are “dense,”

    Not so with everyday life. Repetition, like going to work everyday doesn’t make dense memories. The first time you drive to a new job you are conscious of the time it takes. After you do it everyday for years you no longer take notice of the time.

    And time flies for old people because we do less and less new things. We have fewer new experiences. We no longer make dense memories.

    Time is going “slower” now because the virus is a first; its new. Thus dense memories. Enjoy!

    Best from hibernation.

    The days just slip away, one after another, and we wonder where the years went.

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    1. It would be very strange for me to experience a protracted period of hot weather. No doubt I might get used to it eventually. The closest so far was the famous ‘long summer’ of 1976, with record temperature in the UK for months on end. I found it affected my sleep, but of course we did not have A/C.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  17. I don’t mind the slowing down. Like you, I rather enjoy it. I miss my family, though. I think it’s knowing it still is not safe to visit them that keeps me unsettled.

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