Fast-forward

I’ve been getting terrible sleep lately, probably because I’ve been drinking too much espresso but I’m naturally just a chronic over-thinker.

Recently, I’ve been waking up at 6:30 am everyday (no point in having an alarm anymore) and instead of going to back to sleep I started thinking how I’ve been seeing a lot of people talk about how fast time seems to be flying. To me it feels like the days are starting to mesh together at this point. I wake up, go to work, come home and before I know it I’m right back at work. We’re already in mid-October but it was just Summer and we were all complaining about the heat.

I think it’s a mixture of things, but one of the actual theories is that when you are young, you learn take the time to learn so many new things everyday. The time you put into learning different skills causes the days to be slower because you have to take in the new information. Since we are older, we’ve learned our (some) lessons and skills, so the days seem to be going by much faster than they used to. Which gives us the perfect excuse to pick up a new skill or hobby.

I think another part of it is that we are over consuming everything. We want everything on demand. I could order something from Amazon in the morning and depending on what it is, get it by time I get home from work. Gone are the days where we have to wait weeks to receive an order. There’s no more waiting.

All forms of media are also all demand. Every single episode of any season of almost any show you want to watch is streamable. You don’t get the anticipation of waiting for a new episode to come on, discussing it endlessly with friends and coworkers throughout the week before the new episode comes on. (As a sidenote, lets discuss how paying for every streaming service is basically the same as getting cable at this point. Hundreds of tv shows and movies and nothing to watch. They’ve finessed us so much, it hurts! Two steps forward, three steps back.) I don’t even think people watch Youtube videos like they used to, not when you can watch hundreds of Tiktoks in the same amount of time. (My attention span will never thank me for this.)

There’s no patience anymore and that’s why time is flying by. I’ve started to try to take my life a little slowly and actually enjoy it. Switching up my routine has helped as well. Sometimes instead of ordering an Uber from work, I’ll walk home. I’ve also started sitting outside for an hour under the sun to decompress instead of rushing home. I’m actually so grateful for those moments when I can take it easy. Highly encourage everyone to slow down instead of living so fast paced, you’ll enjoy your time on Earth that much more.