Time is a funny thing.
While completing my 300 miles in July, I listened to a lot of audiobooks. Several of them were about time, from a biological, psychological, and physics viewpoint. Time is still not well understood, but it is something that people think about, well, all the time.
I was listening to a podcast yesterday (during a relaxing 5k run), and the podcaster was talking about how time seemed to be moving slower for him. Even though August is here, it felt like July hadn’t happened yet. He wondered if other people had this same problem. Perhaps some do, but I do not. Despite this being a weird year, my clock knows it is August.
I think the reason time can become separated from reality is because, for most people, time moves with routine. We know it’s Monday because we go to work or school. We know it’s Thursday because that is when our book club meets. Thanks to COVID, all that has changed and so our sense of time is broken.
The reason I don’t have this problem is that I set a goal with a start date, an end date, and a tracking mechanism. My goal to complete 300 miles in July started on the 1st, ended on the 30th, and involved me doing ten miles every day. I made a chart with 60 squares. Each square had a five in it, and when I complete 5 miles, I put a sticker on that square. Every day I could see the stickers accumulate. This was the passage of time.
If you find time breaking on you, why not start a project that you can track? Perhaps you will plant a set amount of bulbs a day, or walk a certain distance, or write so many words. By having something concrete to measure and look forward to, time will straighten itself out. Plus, you’ll have the satisfaction of finishing something which can overcome the woes of 2020.