Naturally these questions drive both myself and others around me crazy at times. To some extent, I have improved my abilities to be content with whatever it is that I am doing, even if it consists of nothing. But for the most part, I have to continually remind myself to take a deep breath and to just plain relax- truly not easy for me to do!

Whether or not it’s healthy to be this concerned with time (I don’t think that it really can be), I do think that it is natural for someone like myself who thinks about the “big questions” and has a very large fear of death. The fact that each of our lives is and has to be finite makes them in some way centered around the concept of time. Along with my fear of death itself, it’s my fear of becoming old(er) and looking back with regrets about the way I spent my time.

I have heard many people echo the experiences I have had with wanting to have more time (to do what?!), and not only to have more time, but to also have more free time in which to do nothing in particular. And then when I do have that time, I of course have trouble relaxing and instead feel guilty about doing nothing- i.e. feeling like I should in fact be doing something. A classic vacation scenario.

And then there is of course the situation of being somewhere I don’t want to be (work), and time moving ridiculously slowly, compared with the situation of being somewhere I want to be (or being with someone I want to be with), and time moving at warp speed. It involves a unit of time (a minute or an hour, or even a second) that is uniform no matter where I am or what I am doing, and it is my perception of this unit of time that is the variable.

I recently left my job and my life in Arlington, Virginia, and spent a few weeks at home in Rhode Island. It was to be my long awaited break, before my road trip west to my new home in San Francisco. Something curious happened- time flew. OK, now maybe that isn’t something so curious at all, but it was still very noticeable to me. Having waited for a long time and for numerous reasons to leave the Washington DC area, I of course had felt the time to be passing very slowly until I left. Here I am, sitting on (or is it in?) the West Coast, a full 6 weeks later. Completely, and overwhelmingly unreal.

How did time pass so quickly, and how does it pass so quickly in general when there is nothing you have to be doing? Of course being in the house I grew up in and being with family and friends in Rhode Island contributed to this taking place. But how was it possible considering that I had nothing to do other than enjoy being home (a little simplified, considering I was going to be moving cross-country, but still…)?

Talking it over with a friend of mine who also recently left his job, and had about a month in between where he was next headed, we came to the interesting and puzzling conclusion that time actually moved quicker when we had nothing to do each day, than when we had everything to be doing each day. This seems to be contrary to the norm of “the busier you are, the faster the hours, days, and weeks go by”.

How very strange that time moved at its fastest when there was nothing filling our days!