I’ve never been very good with time.
I always say that time doesn’t like me. It certainly feels like that way. It has a habit of disappearing on me. I’ve lost over an hour before; one minute it was quarter to six, a few minutes later it was half past seven. I still have no idea how it happened.
I have never known how long a minute feels like. I have never been able to put something in the oven, come back later and known how long it’s been in there for. If I forget to put my timer on, I’m screwed. Even now as I write this, an hour has disappeared in what feels like half that time.
It gets worse around deadlines. One minute it’s three in the afternoon, then suddenly it’s four and I still haven’t gotten as much done as I wanted to. This past year feels like it’s been nothing but work and deadlines, and so many things have fallen by the wayside as a result; sharing my thoughts here was one of them.
Summer is confusing. Hours blur, and days, even weeks just blend into one another. I always lose track of the days. It ends up just being a period of time-stasis, in which I don’t register the days passing until it’s September. This year has been one of the worst for it that I can remember. I’m pretty sure a couple of weeks in July and August just simply didn’t happen. Yet now it’s September, so surely they must have done?
I found a term sometime around my April-May uni deadlines: time blind.
When I read up on what it was, I recognised it as one of the difficulties I face. To be time blind is to have no linear sense of time, to be unable to feel time passing. To look at the clock at half past twelve and then look up to find it’s half past two and yet it feels as though no time has passed at all. Or even the opposite, occasionally. To be time blind is to have no idea how long is spent on an activity unless timed. To be time blind is to know that there’s something on at this time on this day, but no matter how much time passes, it always feels the same amount of time away.
I’m sure this probably applies to everyone in some form; why else would we have the phrase time flies when you’re having fun? But for me, it’s constant. It’s always been this way. It was a relief to finally find a phrase for it, to find out others have it too. Finding someone else with the same difficulties makes it seem much more real, makes it feel much more like I’m not just imagining it. It seems to be most common in ADHD, especially with the influence of hyperfocus, but time processing and time management difficulties have also always had close links to Dyspraxia and executive dysfunction.
This academic year is the first year I won’t be going back to another year in education. It’s a strange concept to me. I’ve always had school keeping my days of the week structured and grounded, but once my last deadline goes in in October, there’ll be nothing ahead of me to tell me what day it is until I manage to find an actual job. Am I nervous about it? In a way, I guess. I’m already hopeless at remembering dates — birthdays and holidays always creep up on me.
This picture really sums it up for me. I’ve used it before in a post, but there’s something about the character trying to keep the time from disappearing that I find relatable. Because time keeps slipping away anyway, because even when using all the strength in her power, there’s nothing she can do about it. I’ve been known to use countless alarms, have clocks that are ahead of time, and do everything I can to try to keep on track, but to no avail.
So I just have to try to hold on, like the girl in the picture, and hope that not too much time disappears into the void that is time blindness.
little thoughts from a little thinker... 