Now I Understand Why You Have Less Time As You Get Older

When I was a child, I once heard someone say "the older you get, the less time it seems you have in a day"

At the time, I didn't get it. A day has 24 hours for everyone, so how could it decrease as you get older?

Now that I'm in my thirties, the point is starting to make sense.

When you're a child, and the only thing that takes up most of your time is some form of compulsory education, you ironically can't wait for time to speed up so you can get past all that boring stuff, or at least skip the seeming drudgery of reading textbooks and answering questions by bubbling in or circling answers on tests. In reality, school is basically the last time time seems so slow you want it to speed up, because as you graduate and enter world proper, time starts to decrease.

Excepting college, and even that is variable depending on whether you also work during college, time decreases exponentially because you are subtracting the time spent working a steady job from time to do other things, and as you get promoted and/or your responsibilities increase, your time seems to grow shorter and shorter as you become more and more dependable to your employer.

With that said, I now more than understand why time decreases as you get older.

Back before my own responsibilities increased regularly, I found myself with a lot of time on hands, most of which I spent on various sites like the Kiwi Farms where I basically, in hindsight, took for granted my breather from the hectic pace I would have to follow when my own personal and professional responsibilities increased. Now that I have a lot more to do, I have become painfully aware how much less time I have to mess around.

Now, speaking of wasting time on the Kiwi Farms, I barely get a chance to look at it anymore, and then mostly just to see what nutty news articles their news board (the only reason I log in anymore) has managed to dig up for a quick laugh before I get back to work. Even though I write reviews on video games too, even that is now Serious Time I Don't Have To Waste because that is also a job, and I speak from experiences, writing about playing games makes both the writing and the game playing pretty dull when it's a job you re obligated to perform.

And yes, I'm serious, even a hobby intended to alleviate boredom can be very tedious instead when you are forced to write copy about that hobby. Had I gone back in time and told my child self who once thought being a games reviewer was fun that it would actually be hard work, he'd probably laugh at me, and now, I can understand the reason why.

I also have family I have to take care of and friends whose health and safety I have to watch out for now, and my concern for them tends to occasionally cut into that period called sleeping, which only tends to make me more miserable when I have to get up and face the lions called Responsibility and Hard Work.

The point of all this musing is that I now understand why it seems like time seems less than it was when I was a child, and now I know not to take the free time I do have for granted as much anymore. In a greater sense, given human lifespans are finite and all of us have no idea when the last grain falls from the top of the hourglass of our mortal lives, the older you get, in a way it's very true you do have less time, so it's worth spending what time you do have productively as possible, a lesson I never understood completely when I was younger but now understand to a depressing degree now that I'm older.

And if anyone happens to be wondering if I have pointers, then all I can say is that take my words as a warning to take what time you have to yourself and not let it go to waste, cause at least on this side of the mortal coil, it's all you got, and it would be a shame to waste it on pointless things.