Didn't a year used to be a long time?
When you're a kid, a year is an unimaginably long time. Even a week is as close to "forever" as to make no difference - especially when the grown-ups tell you, "Sorry, not today, but we'll go next week, I promise."

But now, a year is so short, I catch myself thinking, "I'll do that next year," and not considering it to be procrastination. In my head, the world has turned into that scene in The Time Machine (the original one, you young whippersnappers), where the sun goes around the sky so fast it's a blur of light, and the hem-lines of the skirts in the shop-window opposite go up and down like a short-sighted rabbit in the Bear Factory's reject bin.

Birthdays fly past like cars on a motorway. Christmas unloads its bowels on the duvet of my consciousness with alarming frequency. I blink and friends' toddlers shoot up like bamboo in the rainy season, and the next time I see them they're telling me of their impending sex-change operation and their thriving internet business.

I'm starting to think of a decade the way I used to think of a year. At this rate, I won't even notice my declining years; a moment's lapse in concentration, and whoops! There go my seventies!

Perhaps old people don't really have bad eye-sight, they just can't focus on the speed the world is moving around them.
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Mon 11 Jun 2012, 15:10, 5 replies)

It's June already.
JUNE!
( Ghoti Fingers, Mon 11 Jun 2012, 17:33, closed)

I know, what the fuck.
It's as if one day I was thinking "awfully nice spring we're having", then the next "oh well, back to typical spring weather -- wait, it's summer? wat?"
(EvilTerran rearranged his letters on, Mon 11 Jun 2012, 19:23, closed)

I agree
when you are 10 say, 1 year is a tenth of your life.
When you are 40, a tenth of your life is 4 years.
So 1 year to a 10 year old is like 4 years to a 40 year old.

Also, the perceived speed of the passage of time a related to the number of new things you are experiencing. That is why you can suddenly find that you have spent 5 years doing a tedious job. You've not done anything new so you don't notice the time passing when you think back (even though at the time it can seem to take forever). When you are a child nearly everyday brings something new.

Still get that same sinking feeling when they say 'Doctor Who will be back in the autumn' that is still a lifetime away.
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Mon 11 Jun 2012, 18:30, closed)

oh yes!
'christmas unloads its bowels on the duvet of my conciousness' this must be the greatest description of Christmas I've ever heard! Well done! I'm going to store that one right next to my wank bank...
(bangthedrum, Mon 11 Jun 2012, 23:46, closed)

click
for like a short-sighted rabbit in the Bear Factory's reject bin.
(andythepieman Is surfing the waves of indifference on, Wed 13 Jun 2012, 10:19, closed)