Somehow, again, Time is flying by way too rapidly. How can we be so close to Thanksgiving already?
Tuesday! A day to Slow Down the Pace!
As you can see by Itzl's concerned look, this group gives Kossacks a safe place to check in, a daily diary where we can let people know we are alive, doing OK, and not affected by such things as heat, blizzards, floods, wild fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, power outages, earthquakes, or other such things that could keep us off DKos. It also allows us to find other Kossacks nearby for in-person checks when other methods of communication fail - a buddy system. If you're not here, or anywhere else on DKos, and there are adverse conditions in your area (floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, earthquakes etc.), we and your buddy are going to check up on you. If you are going to be away from your computer for a day or a week, let us know here. We care!
IAN is a great group to join, and a good place to learn to write diaries. Drop one of us a Kosmail and ask to be added to the Itzl Alert Network anytime! We all share the publishing duties, and we welcome everyone who reads IAN to write diaries for the group! Every member is an editor, so anyone can take a turn when they have something to say, photos and music to share, a cause to promote or news!
We do have a diary schedule. But, when you are ready to write that diary, either post in thread or send FloridaSNMOM a Kosmail with the date. If you need someone to fill in, ditto. FloridaSNMOM is here on and off through the day usually from around 9:30 or 10 am eastern to around 11 pm eastern.
Monday:
BadKitties
Tuesday:
ejoanna
Wednesday:
Caedy
Thursday:
art ah zen
Friday:
FloridaSNMOM
Saturday:
Most Awesome Nana
Sunday:
loggersbrat
To state the Obvious (for me at least) I am stunned year by year by how quickly time (weeks, months, even years) is passing. Wasn't it just Summer/August/Labor Day/ October/Halloween/Yesterday/2010/Etc.? How come?
And how is it that individual days can seem sooooo long sometimes, yet the years still whiz by?
Research suggests that short periods of time (e.g., an hour, a day, maybe a week) are perceived in a similar way by all ages. But years? That's a different kettle of perception for the young and the older.
"They" say that time just seems to fly by more quickly when you are older. OK, but why? Well some "experts " say it's because as we grow older, each time segment is a smaller and smaller fraction of our entire lives, so it seems to register as less of the whole. For a 3-year-old, a week (let alone a year!) is a HUGE fraction of her life. Whereas for us more "mature" people, a week, even a year, is but a drop in the old bucket. This is also called The Ratio Theory.
Apparently, aside from the theory of "fractions", there are a few other reasons that as we age we perceive that time is going faster. In other words, why time flies:
1. As we age, the number of "novel" experiences usually decline. (e.g., We have already experienced that first Thanksgiving celebration in our family.)
2. Routine events seem to fly by faster than the novel. Presumably, as we grow older, more of our life is routine. Ergo, our lives seem to spin by faster.
Some who have studied this issue--as opposed to people like me who just complain about it--say a key to (seemingly) slowing Time down is to, well, shake it up: get more new experience in your life. More novelty. Huh! What a concept!
Others, like Philip Yaffe, don't buy this "novelty" concept
It is a widely accepted adage that, "The older you get, the faster time seems to go." But why should aging have this effect? After all, there is the parallel adage that, "Time flies when you are having fun." But as we age, time flies whether we are having fun or not.
Yaffe writes of the accumulation of milestones as we age--resulting in (presumably) less Anticipation and more Retrospection. But he also offers this thought, a "good news" memo I have long tried to comfort myself with:
If accumulating milestones is truly the secret of the accelerating years, what do we do about it? Basically nothing; we just have to accept it. However, this is not necessarily a negative. True, the good things are coursing away faster and faster into the past. But so are the not-so-good things.
Other theories appear in this
Scientific American article:
1. We gauge time by memorable events.
As William James hypothesized, we may be measuring past intervals of time by the number of events that can be recalled in that period. Imagine a 40-something mom experiencing the repetitive, stressful daily grind work and family life. The abundant memories of her high school years (homecoming football games, prom, first car, first kiss, graduation) may, compared to now, seem like much longer than the mere four years that they were.
2. The amount of time passed relative to one’s age varies.
For a 5-year-old, one year is 20% of their entire life. For a 50-year-old, however, one year is only 2% of their life. This “ratio theory,” proposed by Janet in 1877, suggests that we are constantly comparing time intervals with the total amount of time we’ve already lived.
3. Our biological clock slows as we age.
With aging may come the slowing of some sort of internal pacemaker. Relative to the unstoppable clocks and calendars, external time suddenly appears to pass more quickly.
4. As we age, we pay less attention to time.
When you’re a kid on December 1, you’re faithfully counting down the days until Santa brings your favorite Hot Wheels down the chimney. When you’re an adult on December 1, you’re a little more focused on work, bills, family life, scheduling, deadlines, travel plans, Christmas shopping, and all of that other boring adult stuff. The more attention one focuses on tasks such as these, the less one will notice the passage of time.
5. Stress, stress, and more stress.
As concluded by Wittmann and Lehnhoff (and replicated by Friedman and Janssen), the feeling that there is not enough time to get things done may be reinterpreted as the feeling that time is passing too quickly. Even older individuals (who are, more often than not, retired from work) may continue to feel similarly due to physical handicaps or diminished cognitive ability.
Probably worth a try at the "add-some-novelty advice." Maybe that would help us get a firmer grip on the "slippage" of Time.
And feel less of this
Also: cut down on stress and deadlines. They seem to speed up the old time machine too.
Hey, worth a try. So, 10 days from yet another in a long series of Thanksgivings, how is Time moving for you?