15 Things: Time Flies

So I scratched out on an index card the 15 things I think I've learned since I started blogging.  I only got 10, but I'm betting more will show up.  I didn't mull over the 15 things, I just wrote down what sprang up.  "Time Flies" was first.  Now, trying to post about it, I'm feeling sort of sheepish.  I mean, why did that one jump out at me?  What did I mean?  What am I supposed to say about it that doesn't seem obvious?  Did I really only learn that in these last 18 months?  But it was the first thing my instinct answered when I asked myself, "What are the big lessons?" 

I've learned that time flies in two ways.  One is the obvious -- the months and years start hurtling by, faster and faster it seems as I get older, and if I don't take conscious steps to direct myself -- set priorities and specific goals and attack the things that are vaguely nagging at me and plan trips and write letters and try new things -- the days and weeks and months fill up with things I didn't necessarily decide to do and suddenly months have gone by and I'm in a place I didn't expect to wind up.   It's embarrassing to write this.  Everyone else knows it.  But, really, days fill up just doing the things you always do, and the things in the back of your mind that bother you won't change, or the things that you're curious and a little bit excited about but scared to try won't just come to you, because time is flying by, and things that you're not doing now you probably won't be doing in three months or one year or eighteen months from now unless you do something specific about it.  Good intentions or low-grade discomfort aren't enough.  I'm trying to learn how to take action more quickly when I realize I want something, or that something troubles me, rather than waiting, because I blink and six months have gone by and that quiet desire or doubt is still there.  I think I've learned some of that during the time I've been blogging, but I still have a really long way to go.

The other way time flies for me is on the micro level.  When I write, I lose time.  I lose time when I'm sailing, too, but I've known that for years.  In the rest of life, most activities, you can ask me "approximately how long have you been doing this thing you're doing right now," and I'll estimate pretty well.  If I'm in the middle of a sailboat race, halfway up the leg to the windward mark and you asked me I'd have no idea if it had been twenty minutes or two hours.  I could guess from external cues, but there's no clock inside me noticing the time going by, which is a low-grade consciousness present in most other things I do.  Through blogging I have learned that I can disappear into writing -- it never feels like wasted time, and I always have time for it, and when I'm doing it I don't notice or care about what's going on outside the little bubble around me and the screen.   I write fast, but can go back to something little and tinker with it, changing this word or deleting this sentence or adding something for clarity.  Most of the time I just leave it, at least on this blog, sorry to say, but the point is that I never feel rushed when I'm messing around with writing.  Even if I AM rushed and don't have the time to write, I write anyway, trying to squeeze time that isn't there to do it.  Or sometimes things don't come out and I write a lot and only figure out what I'm trying to say at the end of it all .  But there's no sense of resentment or impatience or even consciousness about the time I spend writing.  Like sailing, it exists in its own world for me.  Stealing time to blog has made me notice the way writing and time work for me.   [Again, this is a little embarrassing, because I've been writing for years -- see my bookshelf of journals -- and I don't think this time disappearing thing is a new phenomenon.  I should have noticed it years ago, probably.  But now I think I get it.]

Comments

[JohnW]

"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." Bertrand Russell

[a]

i can lose time reading blogs. but with yours, i often feel like i am also learning - not simply peering at someone else. your writing, and the things you consider and notice about the world around you and within you spur my own thoughts about who i am, where i am, and where i am going.
thank you for your insight - all 1500 and counting.