Time's just going to have to fly

We all skipped ahead an hour in time Sunday morning. (If this is news to you, stop reading and go reset your clocks.)

Despite losing an hour of sleep, it’s my favorite day of the year. My second favorite is the day after winter solstice, when it starts getting light a teeny bit earlier every day.

I try consciously not to wish my life away, but I always count down to those two dates on the calendar with anticipation. Winter’s dark and cold weigh on my soul. If I could hibernate, I would--even if it meant missing Christmas.

I used to live in North Carolina, still in the same time zone but far to the east of Grant County. It gets dark so much earlier there because it’s so much further east. I was not a fan of leaving work in the dark.

I always feel sorry for western Kentucky folks when I cross into the central time zone in winter. Being right on the eastern edge of that time line means kids who ride the late bus from school get home at sunset. I’ve seen them. It makes me sad.

This May, I turn 60, so I’ve been thinking about time lately. It whacked me across the head this weekend as I was reading a book about “Star Trek.”

Ironically, the whacking had nothing to do with time travel. (Gene Roddenberry, the show’s creator, fought against any time travel in the original series or the reboot, “The Next Generation,” until he passed away in 1991.)

No, the whack came while reading about the making of one of the Star Trek movies, “First Contact.” I don’t remember a lot of plots from the shows or other Star Trek movies, but I have such a clear image of that particular movie.

If you’d asked me, I’d have said that movie came out seven or eight years ago.

It was 1996.

28 years ago? How is that possible?

I’m sure every adult reading this has wondered why we experience the passage of time so differently now than when we were kids. It seemed to take forever for birthdays or holidays to come around every year. Summer break stretched out gloriously with long, lazy days.

Now, time flies by and I want it to stop.

I looked it up to see why we perceive time passing faster as we age and whether there is anything we can do to slow it down.

Part of it seems to have to do with how much new stuff children are experiencing and what a large percentage of their lives a year comprises. For a 6-year-old, a year is over 16% of his or her life. For me, it’s 1.6%.

Having a routine lifestyle seems to play a large part in an adult’s perception of time. The more our lives are the same, the more the brain lumps big parts of it together. Then when we look back, it feels like less time has passed.

Adding variety to your life, therefore, was one suggestion to make time seem to pass more slowly.

Well I absolutely did not buy that. My entire adult life has been a series of moves and changes that include taking on a dozen different types of jobs, meeting new people and performing my Chautauqua characters in hundreds of different places, including the Kennedy Center. I’m involved in theatre and film, which demands constant pivoting and world-building.

My life has never been boring or routine, so no way is lack of variety the reason it’s flying by so fast.

Then I read a little further. Lack of variety is not my problem. Multi-tasking is. Mindfulness--living in the moment--is good for making time stretch out, according to Cindy Lustig, a University of Michigan psychology professor.

Mindfulness. Huh. I am going to try, but with a deadline looming every seven days, I’m probably in the wrong business for fostering mindfulness.

Time’s just going to have to fly, and I need to stop wasting my non-refundable life dwelling on it.

The days are staying light later now and feel a little longer. Here’s to making the most of every day we’re given.