For many years now my sense of time passing has been that it's steadily accelerating: on Thursdays it seems as if I put out the trash bin for last Thursday morning's pickup (always around 5:30 am with a lot of banging and grinding and noise to make sure everyone in the neighborhood knows it's happening) a moment rather than a week before.
Days whizz by, all of a sudden it's time to get ready for bed.
The months pass so fast I only turn the calendar over every other month.
I've been thinking about this for years without gaining any traction understanding why this is happening.
Yes, everyone has always said time passes faster as you get older and I've always just taken that as a given since the sentiment seems universal.
Then I changed my running routine last month so as to get it done as early as possible in the morning before the 95° sun and humidity make it unbearable.
My heat tolerance as I get older isn't close to what it used to be: I used to welcome it and revel in the sweatfest.
So, off I went in the morning before it got really hot, same 2-3 miles daily as always.
But after the third straight day doing this it struck me that things had changed as I moved through the day: I no longer spent the bulk of the day procrastinating about going running (which activity I dislike doing and have always disliked), instead doing things I like to do like reading and posting to boj — which has, since inception in 2004, always put me into a flow state that can last many hours where time passes very quickly.
Now, though, since switching things up to run first and do other stuff later, time feels like it's back to normal, the way I felt it passing when I was much younger.
The flow state still happens but it doesn't feel like I've had to avoid doing something I'd rather not do to get there.
All in all, a huge improvement in my quality of life.
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