Tick Tock Tick Tock ...

I’ve noticed that as I grow older, there seems to be less and less time to do the things that I want or need to do. It really applies to everything … huge long-term aspirations (write The Great American A Mediocre Albanian Novel (I'm trying to be realistic here); finally convince Betty Jane Kloppenschleimer to return my calls), mid-size projects (finish the damn lyrics to that song; clean the garage), simple tasks (scratch my itchy belly; get another frosty beer (okay, I get that one done)) … there’s just never enough time.

“I wonder what that’s owing to?” I asked myself, then scolded myself for ending a sentence with a preposition. “I wonder what that’s owing to, dumbass?” I then asked myself, quite pleased with having caught my error, as that particular grammatical faux pas is one I try and watch for.*

My first thought was that as we age, our perception of time changes, and the hours and days just feel like they’re going by faster, giving the illusion of having less time to do things. There is some evidence for this (science-y evidence, not simply that Stephen King refers to time during childhood as “slow time,” though that’s good enough for me), but that cake ain’t quite done bakin’, as they say in academic research circles.

Another thought was that I simply have more things to do. Perhaps as I’ve gotten older, all of the things I keep putting off have been piling up, so that the ratio of activities:time is continually increasing. This seems plausible at first, as I am quite the procrastinator, but my memory is also shot to hell, so my actually remembering things that I would like to do for any extended length of time seems a stretch.

Then, this morning, I figured it out. It occurred to me, after I took off my underwear to turn them around after putting them on backwards, after unbuttoning my shirt to rebutton it in proper alignment, after lying on the ground writhing in agony after stubbing my toe on the bed post, after tripping over Indy and falling in the hallway, after spending 20 minutes looking for one of my shoes, after waking up at 6:00 to get to work by 7:30 and not arriving until 7:50 because of all this stuff … it occurred to me that I have less and less time because I’m a fucking idiot.

I feel so much better now that I know!

* D’oh!