Time is Weird

On June 10th, I was in Maine being lulled by the ocean as words floated up and out of me.

After five blissful seaside nights, I was home for one full day before I flew an hour south. One week after the waves were hypnotizing me, I was in Washington, D.C., looking at the Capitol and wondering how is it that the miniscule percentage of Americans who today are willfully and maliciously issuing laws and proclamations that are destroying the lives of millions of people can be concentrated in such a tiny, tiny space.

But I digress… mostly, on that day in D.C. I was bone tired. Exhausted. Which surprised me.

In a previous life I wrote about travel. My main criteria for choosing a place to live was that it was near an airport. A former roommate once remarked that one trip a month made me cranky, but so did one every two weeks. The sweet spot turned out to be hitting the road once every three weeks.

Admittedly, the last couple of weeks have looked a lot like my old life. But my old life doesn’t fit anymore, and in my old life my Substack would not exist. Notably, travel no longer invigorates me. Of course, it is more cattle call than ever before, but even after driving a few hours to the Maine coast or a short plane ride, I need a day to recover. Part of it is age, part of it is my extreme comfort in being ensconced in one place that has everything I need to thrive: quiet, woods, water, history, solitude, an extremely low population density. And friends who largely strive for the same things.

But I marvel at how the time passes differently when I’m somewhere else. Right now I am trying to wrap my head around the fact that just seven days before I was gazing upon the Capitol Dome, I was having dinner with a new friend, a well-known mystery writer who grilled me about every aspect of my memoir.

Today, it feels like it was a month ago.

One thing doesn’t change however. After I spill out my life story to someone who hasn’t heard it before, my body buzzes for the rest of the day and night, reminding me what was set in my bones decades ago:

YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO TELL.

I don’t think that will ever completely go away, even after my memoir is published and my eyes have washed over the words countless times and I’ve divulged my secrets to total strangers over and over again.

And that’s okay. To me it’s a constant reminder of how far I’ve come.

Sometimes I ponder trading the security of home — where time passes in a blink — for the road, where the newness and freshness forces you to pay attention, therefore elongating the days. And at 62 years old, I am very much aware that there is far less runway in front of me than behind.

So when time passes more slowly when I’m away from home, well, I’ll take it.

This Week’s Takeaway: When does time seem to pass differently for you? In a yoga class? Thousands of miles away from home? In your kitchen, absorbed in creaming butter and sugar? When your phone breaks? ;-) It’s important to step away from the always-forward unforgiving pace of the clock, at least once a week or more often. Try to make time slow down, even for just five minutes, and really take notice on how your mood and outlook change as a result.