Welcome to the Warp Zone

Imagine, if you will, a deep voice, much like that of Jon Luke Piccard.

Welcome to the Time Warp Zone

These are the voyages of the Abby Enterprise….I was going to be cute here and give you my version of the beginning version of Star Trek, which thanks to my mother’s unnatural love of weird shows, I thought was permanently ingrained into my brain. I’m very, very pleased to realize that without googling it, I don’t remember anymore than that. Thank goodness.

Then the phone rings, and it’s my mother. Coincidence or not?!? Maybe she has mind reading powers…but that’s a whole different post.

I digress.

Have you ever waken up and got to work and realized its not the right day? You know, you think that today is Wednesday and it’s actually Thursday. Or you are writing a check (yes, I still do that, I’m not completely plastic yet) and you realize that it’s the 20th of July and you are wondering what happened to July? Because yesterday it was just the 2nd.

Welcome to Calendar Warp.

Calendar Warp – n – a strange disease that effects people after age 25, or earlier if they have small children. (yeah, I made it up, don’t go fussing at Webster)

This doesn’t affect small children. They haven’t been taught how to do it yet. They still remember how to live in the moment.

How many times have you gone on a trip with your kids and they ask how much longer? Or when you are getting ready to go on vacation? All they care about is right now. Not tomorrow, not next week, now. I so envy that.

I was about 10 when my grandfather told me that a year to me, was a week to him.

That’s a profound thought. The older I get the more accurately I understand it, and the more I wish I didn’t. Most days I feel like it shouldn’t be (insert whatever month here). It can’t be time for the truck payment again. It can’t be 5 more months until Christmas. But it is. Time really isn’t going faster. There are still 24 hours a day, still 60 minutes in an hour, still 60 seconds in a minute, still 365 days in a year. Yet, ask a 5 year old and they will tell you that there are millions of seconds, billions of minutes, and trillions of hours in a day.

Am I warped? You betcha! Ok, perhaps I should rephrase the question…do I suffer from calendar warp? You betcha. I’m not the innocent 5 year old anymore. I have bills to pay, work to do, and chores to do. The work days drag and the weekends fly by. Or so I think, but I wake up and it’s the middle of July, and last week it was April.

It makes me feel old, it makes me realize how fast babies grow up, and how complicated things are compared to how complicated things were.

Maybe the kids are onto something. Maybe they remember to slow down and smell the flowers. And all we think about is watering and weeding the flowers.

I know that slowing down is definitely something that I have forgotten how to do. I spend 45 hours a week at work, at least 15-20 doing homework, plus cooking, cleaning laundry, sleeping, taking a shower. It’s a wonder I have time to go to the bathroom. My life is complicated, definitely more so than it was as a 5 year old. I have that awful “R” word. You know, responsibilities. Yeah that one.

I would love to have a different perspective, and the ability to slow down, but unfortunately life as an adult doesn’t always work that way. If I skip tonight’s study session, it will just mean that I have twice as much tomorrow to do, and that there will be one less day to work on it before it is due. I can skip the truck payment, while my bank account may appreciate that fact, I’m sure that bank that the truck is financed through won’t.

I keep thinking that maybe, just maybe I’ll find the time to stop and take a breather. To stop worrying about when the bills are due, and what day it is. Maybe it would help if I would stop wishing time away. You know, wishing it was 5pm so I could leave work already. Wishing it was Friday instead of Monday.

Ever wonder how different things would be if we didn’t have clocks and watches? If there were no way to judge time, other than the rising and the setting of the sun, do you think that our lives would be different?

I’m pretty sure that there is no cure for calendar warp. Time will keep moving forward whether I want it too or not.

I don’t know if that’s a blessing or a curse. I guess it all depends on whether I stop and smell the flowers, or just water them and move on.

~You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by. ~James Matthew Barrie

~Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. ~Carl Sandburg

~The Future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. ~C.S. Lewis

~Time, the cradle of hope.... Wisdom walks before it, opportunity with it, and repentance behind it: he that has made it his friend will have little to fear from his enemies, but he that has made it his enemy will have little to hope from his friends. ~Charles Caleb Colton