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"Tempus Fugit"

Time flies when you're having fun. Or does it?

If ever I'm doing something I enjoy, time seems to whiz by - as I'm sure it does with most people. If I'm enjoying a programme on TV or watching a good film on DVD, an hour or two can pass in what seems like twenty minutes.

Or I could be playing a game on my PC or one of my consoles, and get told that dinner will be ready in five minutes. So I wait five minutes and go to eat my dinner. Except it hasn't been five minutes. It's been an hour, and dinner is stone cold - the bread has gone stale, the chips are soggy, and the sauce on the beans is dark, congealed and vile-looking. Time has seemingly passed much quicker.

Yet that same hour, spent doing something else, can take an eternity. Take work, for example. If you're busy, then it's not too bad. But last Thursday and Friday, I had very little to do. What I had to do was essentially done in about ten minutes (on both days), and the rest of the time was spent browsing the net and chatting on these forums. Because I had things I could be getting on with at home, the days really dragged, with each one feeling like a week.

And yet once the weekend arrived, I was yet again left wondering where the week had gone. And now the weekend has gone, and I'm back at work for another week that is likely to be very slow again. Until the weekend, when the cycle repeats.

Something about time obviously changes as we get older. Although it seems like time itself speeds up, I doubt that's the case. So it must be our perception of it.

When I was a kid and at school, time really did seem to pass much slower. My school years seemed to take an eternity to pass. A week seemed a long time. Two-week holidays were fantastic. The seven-week summer holiday was amazing, and seemed to go on forever. The time between one Christmas and the next seemed to be a very, very long time, and my next birthday always seemed ages away.

It's February.

"Mum, can I have a Big Trak?"

"We can't afford one now - maybe for your birthday, or next Christmas."

"Oh, but muuuuummmmm! That's so far away!"

"It's only five months until your birthday."

"Yeah, but that's aaaaages away."

It didn't seem fair to me at the time, because five months really was a long way off. Now, though, it seems like the blink of an eye.

The Falklands War was twenty years ago, but I remember it as if it were twenty minutes ago - being at Primary School, and cutting out pictures and stories from newspapers to keep in a scrap book.

I remember the Gulf War in the same way, but that was over ten years ago.

I remember clearly looking forward to my eighteenth birthday, because my parents were buying me an Amiga 500. It seems like a few months ago, but it was actually twelve years ago!

It only seems like five minutes ago that we were looking forward to the year 2000, and now we're well into 2002.

I remember looking forward to my holiday to Florida last year. I can remember being there as if it were last week, but it was ten months ago!

So what does happen to time as you get older, and why does it seem to pass so much quicker?

I don't mean to sound depressing, but is it because we're so much more aware of how little time we actually have?

Or is it (as with the 'busy at work' effect mentioned earlier) because we have so much more going on in our lives as we get older, that we are more constantly occupied, and hence time only SEEMS to be passing quicker?

Sometimes I actually find it a little scary. I seem to be rocketing headlong through life, with no hope of slowing down - rapidly approaching old age, without really having had the chance to take anything in from the thirty years which have already passed. It's a bit like that Xbox advert in a way, only when I think about it seriously, it's not funny. Sometimes I feel like I just need to grab hold of something and stop myself before I really do get too far down the line - but there's nothing to grab.

I haven't really put this here as a discussion, so I don't really expect replies. It's just some thoughts I have buzzing around in my head from time to time. I put them here basically to provoke some thought in anyone who reads it, but if those thoughts prompt you to reply, then so much the better.

It's routine that does it, I reckon. After something has happened, the onyl way you have to guage time is how much you remember. The more varied the things you do, the more you'll remember. The more you get into a routine, the more you'll forget.

When you're younger, you've done everything that much less. You remember more of it... as you get older, you filter it out, you've trained yourself to forget what wasn't important.

Keep learning, keep doing new things.. it won't stop the freefall, but it muight give you a handhold.

Good God!

Christ.

I've spent the whole day writing. Topics, replies. In what feels like, honestly, two hours, I've been online here for eight hours.

It's unreal.

As you said, Time does NOT fly when doing work or homework.

Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one who's noticed it.

See, today at work really dragged while I was there. Now, though, the day seems to have flown by, and it's not long until it's time for bed. Yet I only feel like I've been home from work for an hour or so.

I got in, had a coffee, had dinner, watched one program on TV... and now it's 9pm.

It almost seems unreal!

Ok, one and a half, I'm tired.

But still, where did that 30 mins go?

I hate time.

I want to speed it up and slow it down at the same instant. I'm waiting with anticipation, and at the same moment I watch the seconds tick away until my judgement.

I left school at about ten past three, drove home [three miles], had a drink, checked something out for my mum, I sit down to go on the forums and it's now twenty to five.

It's not funny. I have no control over time. The above should have took about an hour, not nearly two. I can't understand it.

I know how you lot all feel.

I'm nearly 21, and the years since I did my GCSE's have FLOWN by, it's just untrue.

I think I know why though:

When you're 10, a year is a long time, it's 10% of your life.

When you're 20, a year is 5% of your life.

When you're 40, it's 2.5% of your life.

As you get older, a year becomes smaller in relation to your own life length. So it appears to go faster.

See?

Although I am young, in an essence, reading this makes me feel even younger, because I can't even compare to the experiences of your lives as I haven't experienced even half as much as you have. Some of you are basically old enough to be my dad and thinking like it from that point of view, you must kinda get tired of talking to people like me.

I remember December 31st 1999 like it was yesterday. Yet, like you said, we're already well into 2002. Where has all that time gone? I've got a year left of school. That sounds like ages away, but I moved up here a year ago, and I can still remember the day we moved here, although not as clearly as other things.

There was things that stay with us and there are those that we'll never forget. It's just a part of our personalities.

Or as Baz Luhrmann would say: Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than its worth.

I enjoyed reading that, because I know exactly how you feel. Yesterday was my brother's 16th birthday, and I'm struggling to believe it.

Tomorrow is Georgia's first birthday, that's a year that's just flown by.

You're so right about the summer holidays, man, they just used to go on and on, it was fantastic.

I don't know when time seems to speed up, there just seems to be point in which my spare time used to just fly by. Maybe it does correspond to all of the stuff in our lives now, which we must all see as being somewhat more complicated than they were when we were kids.

I spend so much time looking at my watch, pulling my hair out as the time seems to be passing too quickly. Every evening there's so much I want to do, and so little time to do it in. I want time to do stuff with the kids, whether read to them or play a game, there's household stuff I need to do, cook dinner, or wash up, then I love to spend time with my wife, but I also have other things I want to do. Is it poor time management why I can't get it done, or do I just want too much?

I can't believe I ever used to say I was bored when I was a kid. I don't think that I could possibly get bored at home now, because I just don't have the same time.

You know, I actually resent having to bath as it takes time. I hate it when I get tired, and need to sleep, as every minute I spend asleep is a minute in which I can't do something else. You'd think I'd grow to accept it, but no, I haven't!