Comment by martin_a
2 years ago
> The advantage of getting older is time is at warp speed so 2 years is nothing ha ha!
To be honest: Realising that time is going by so fast really scared me this week. Being mid-30s I really need to get my shit together, soon... :-D
Spoiler: nobody ever gets their shit together
There's a quote from Sarah Manguso's _300 Arguments_ that I love:
> With great and solemn portent, my teacher announced she would tell us something that her teacher had told her, and that her teacher’s teacher had told him, and so on, back to Yeats: The thing to remember is that no one ever finds out that you don’t know what you’re doing.
Well unless you tell them, don't do that;-)
..sigh and don't ask me how I know.
That's was the most profound lesson I've heard in a long time.
it touches on some many things.
Not sure that really helps. :-D
I'll give you a small anecdote.
A few months ago, my uncle died. To the outside world, he was very well put together, eloquent, and admired by all who knew him. Worked on physics books as a proofreader for a major publisher his whole life and was celebrated for his work. He was a recluse, but very sociable and an excellent go-between for any socially difficult situation, a real keeper of the peace.
When I went to clear his home, I discovered that his personal space was the opposite of all the above. Dirty, messy, not well organized.
Of all the people I ever expected that from, it wasn't him, but he did an excellent job of appearing to have his shit together.
I shared this with a few others who had late family members that had done very well in their respective field, and the sentiment was the same: nobody ever really seems to get their shit together, they just get better at presenting the parts of themselves that matter.
He was a very happy soul.
but try anyway
Coming up on 40. A quarter feels about as long as two weeks did when I was 10, I reckon.
If this keeps going, each year will feel like a day by the time I'm 60 or so.
[EDIT] Incidentally, I reject the "routine & boredom are what do it" thing. High school felt like it took forever and was far more regimented and regular and boring than my life is now.
I think it is the brain’s compression algorithm that does it.