Where does the time go?

[Tony C]

Perhaps it's my age - I was 51 last week - and the advancing years are making me more acutely aware (but not morbidly so) of my own mortality, but time seems to be going extremely quickly.

Is it just me or don't you get a jolt sometimes when you realise that an incident that you felt happened fairly recently in fact occurred some time ago? This happens to me a lot theses days.

A little earlier I was reading Charlie Brooker's 'Dawn of the Dumb' (not a bad read actually) and in an article he writes about havung watched 'The Power of Nightmares' on BBC2. The article is dated October 2004. That's three and a half years ago. If I had been asked to put a date on that programme I would have guessed at mid 2006 at most.

Similarly my birthday last week brought to mind me posting from Cuba on my 50th birthday a year ago. It seems like a few weeks.

Is it just me?

[boris]

Where does the time go?

Nope, Tony, it's not just you. In fact, it's a scientifically explainable phenomenon, and it's scientifically explained in an excellent book entitled "Why time speeds up as we get older", or something similar. Sadly, I can't remember the explanation (it was probably a couple of years ago that I read the book, although it feels much more recent of course, and these things tend to escape me after a short period).

I hope that helps.

[Tony C]

Where does the time go?

If you could remember the title, boris, I'd be interested in reading it.

If God spares me, of course.

[boris]

Where does the time go?

I couldn't remember the title, so I cheated and went and got it off my bookshelf.

It's called Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older: How Memory Shapes Our Past, by Douwe Draaisma, and it was short-listed for the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books (that's how I came across it - I won a Guardian comp, the prize of which was all the Aventis short-listed books for that year). It was first written in Dutch in 2001, and translated into English in 2004 by Cambridge University Press.

The book isn't just about this phenomenon - it covers various aspects of memory, such as déja-vu, near-death experiences, idiots savants, and other stuff too. All good stuff. I may have to reread it actually, or at least the chapter that pertains to this thread.

[Mumpo]

Where does the time go?

This was going through my mind the other day. Conversely, things that happened fifteen or twenty years in the past seem like they might as well have happened twice as long ago, they really are so irretrievable.

[Mumpo]

Where does the time go?

Ta for that, Boris. It might just have jumped to the top of my reading list.

[erwin]

Where does the time go?

.

I think of the 18 years I've been in Portugal, which have flown. Then I add 18 to my present age and find myself older than my Dad when he died. Then I start to worry.

.

[Alderman Barnes]

Where does the time go?

I find the opposite. I can remember things I did twenty or thirty years ago as if they were yesterday, but after that I have this kind of Keith Richards thing going on, where you have to ask whoever was with me.

After that, there's not a lot that's happened that's been worth remembering.

[Femme Folle]

Where does the time go?

Happy belated birthday, Tony!

[WOM]

Where does the time go?

Two of many thoughts I have on this:

- I was sitting at a stoplight the other day thinking about the fact that I'm 40. I thought 'with a little luck, I'll live as long again as I've lived so far. Every day I've already lived, I get to do again, sort of.' That was a pretty neat thought.

- I take my daughter to gymnastics at my old high school. I often think 'kids that weren't even born when I graduated here have already graduated here'. Those twenty-odd years since I graduated have flown by at light speed. Which mean the first 20 probably did to, even though they felt like an eternity. A lifetime, if you will. My next twenty and the twenty after that will likely fly even faster.

Thought number two took a lot of the piss out of thought number one.

Happy Birthday Tony.

[Auntie Beryl]

Where does the time go?

I have a Julia Fordham earworm.

[cantagalo]

Where does the time go?

When you're 10, a year represents 10% of your life. When you're 50 it's only 2%.

This doesn't explain why I have a perfect memory for FA Cup winners up to about 1996 but then it all becomes a bit of a blur. Is it just that my brain is saturated with useless information and doesn't have room for anything else (even useful stuff)? For example, learning a new language now seems a lot more difficult now than it did at school.

[Spearmint Rhino]

Where does the time go?

I have a Fairport Convention earworm.

Large parts of the late 90s are a blank to me. Not because I was doing vast amounts of drugs and drink at the time (cos I wasn't, well, not the drugs anyway). It's almost as if I've been through some sort of deeply-scarring trauma and my consciousness has blanked it out.

(Feel free to add your Roy Evans jokes here.)

It's like, there's a continuity between me in 1996 and me now, but the guy from 1997-2000 I barely know.

[Mighty Mudhsuden]

Where does the time go?

I think (personally) things seem to have sped up because I'm just not changing that much these days. When I think back to, say, the first seven years of my life (1978-1985) so much changed over that time.

Whenever I'm surfing nostalgia sites - which I do pretty often, *sob* - 1985 seems like a different world to 1978. But the difference from 2008 to 2001 is minimal, even though in that time I've got married, bought a house and had a kid.

[ian.64]

Where does the time go?

But the difference from 2008 to 2001 is minimal

To me the mid-90's and now seem interchangeable almost.

But it's true you can lose sense of passing years. When I'm watching a comedy programme on a channel like Dave, for example, any thoughts I have of it being not so long ago in time are shattered by the realisation that it was probably twenty years since it was originally transmitted.

Speaking of earworms, I had the theme to the 'In The Night Garden' going through my head until now.

[G-Man]

Where does the time go?

As to the Rhino, the '90s are a blur to me too. Mostly, I suspect, because G-Boy was a baby and then a pre-school toddler, and things were pretty hectic. As of 1998/99, my mind is clear.

But I have another theory: in the early '90s, vinyl was phased out in SA. My CD player broke in about 1992, and I didn't replace. So I listened to the radio, played my old vinyl, occasionally taped somebody else's CD. But I did not acquire any new music. Music has always signposted my experiences; in the '90s that was lacking. Perhaps my returning clarity can be attributed to my discovery of MP3s and the ability to play them and CDs on my PC.

[Mighty Mudhsuden]

Where does the time go?

You might be onto something there, Pan Tau.

I remember buying "In Utero" by Nirvana in a shop in Rugby with my dad the week it came out. I remember buying "How High" on CD single by the Charlatans from Selectadisc in Nottingham for a quid in 1999.

These days - fuck knows. Where did I get The National album from? Downloaded it. Probably haven't even listened to all of it.

[Disco Child Ballads]

Where does the time go?

I have a perfect memory for FA Cup winners up to about 1996 but then it all becomes a bit of a blur

.

This may be because almost every FA Cup final since then has been shit.

[imp]

Where does the time go?

Fucking cunting new board. Just spent 20 minutes typing a reply to this, and when I tried to post it, it logged me out. I thought that if you were at least actively typing, you'd be kept logged in.

That's where the fucking time goes. Wasting it on here.

[Mighty Mudhsuden]

Where does the time go?

What was the gist of it, imp?

[WOM]

Where does the time go?

The gist was this: while logging in, check the "Remember Me" box and you won't get logged out. Ever.

[G-Man]

Where does the time go?

But can't things be configured in such away that we will be remembered automatically? Maybe having to tick the box if we wish to be forgotten?

[WOM]

Where does the time go?

Being logged out is obviously a security feature, so people can't post as you if they get onto your machine. Same as it works with web banking.
Automatically remembering you would be like an anti-security feature, with the honus being on an opt-in to a log-out. That would be bizarre.

Honestly, I'm baffled as to how people aren't noticing/figuring out the 'Remember' check box. I mean, over on 'April Timewaster' there are people trading sulfur for wine in a virtual world.

[cantagalo]

Where does the time go?

This may be because almost every FA Cup final since then has been shit.

True. And why bother remembering when you've got a 25% chance of guessing correctly?

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Where does the time go?

I don't know if this is relevant, really, but it's something that's occurred to me several times in the last couple of months, now I'm back to a single life in my mid-30s. Memories that I really haven't had, or thought about, for a decade, are suddenly filling my waking mind, like they were yesterday. It's like I was single last year, can remember vividly being 26, met my (now ex) wife, that all kind of took up about twelve months, and now I'm back where I was.

It's an interesting self-psychoanalysis. Is my brain so pissed off at my divorce that it's just decided to close down the last ten years, because it knows it hurts me to think about them, and slowly but surely I'll forget I was ever married at all? Or is it just some kind of mechanism whereby, being single again, my memories of being single are coming back as a way of reminding me how I used to cope, and behave, in order to force my conscious self to do those same things again?

It's very strange. I actually "feel" 26 again, often consciously, and am doing things like I would have done then. I've had my hair cut short again like it used to be, have started buying "cool" clothes again, and have resurrected interests like going to the Cinema to watch films that don't involve CGI or Jim Carrey, that I thought I'd left behind when my kids came along.

It could also be an horrendous mid-life crisis, I suppose, but as I don't feel like I'm in "crisis" I'm not sure what that means, even if I'm experiencing it.