Does anyone else find the passage of time really odd and confusing? What year does it feel like to you really?

[Timeandspaceidiocy]

Five years ago in one way sounds like not that much but also like a solid block of time, but in reality was 2018 which doesn't seem that long ago. Then I think of covid and suddenly 2018 does seem like a different era completely. But still, not like a long ago time.

Then if I think say back to the Olympics in 2012 - that's obviously over a decade ago now - well in 2012, 2007 seemed fucking ages and ages ago then. Even though there's only 5 years between 2007 and 2012, the same as there is between 2018 and 2023.

2012 itself feels like ages and ages and ages ago to me. 2007 seems almost like a different period in human history.

But. It also kinda feels like we "should" maybe be at say 2009 or 2010 by now. My brain can't fully compute it's 2023. I don't feel it was that long ago since I was at uni.

I'm in my late thirties so fully suspect this is one of the side effects of not being a spring chicken anymore

But does anyone else feel like this?

How do you feel about time passing?

Looking back does it all make sense chronologically to you or seem weird and like it jumps around?

It does! And Brexit was fucking 7 years ago 🤮 I mean, 7! Kids have completed secondary school in that time.

Well the weather's much the same as it was in 2012 so I can understand your confusion.

😠

Well, it all went wrong for me when we had to have calenders and diaries with 2000 on them.

I mean, hey, 19** something is the way to go, so why has it stopped ? Argh !"

When you get to my age you can look back at the 80's with the emphasis on 'Power dressing' and great groups like Culture Club,

Must go now I need a G&T to chillout and reminisce 🙂

I think it's because the younger you are the more proportionately significant each time period is. Ie when you're 20, 5 years is 1/4 of your life so far whereas at 50 it's only 1/10th.
I'm not sure I'm communicating clearly but it makes sense in my head 😂
Also, you do a hell of a lot of growing and changing in a short time period while you're young then after a certain age while you can definitely still be capable of growing and learning, generally your personality is more fixed.
I'm still not ok with the fact that it's 20 years since I was 18 though! Feels like I've blinked and lost years.

My 17 year DD says she resonates with this thread. And that COVID definitely hasn’t helped things.

I'm 47 and am totally confused about when it is tbh.

Well, the 70s is a long time ago, even though I was born then and I am not old, but I remember all the retro 70s parties we had in the 90s.
the 90s is really not that long ago, at all. 2000-2010 - no idea what happened to that time.
surely it must be 2015/16 soon, but in no way can it be 2023, because that would mean i have been driving for 30 years, and I’ve known all my lovely cool uni friends for that amount of time. And whilst at uni, I had known them forever and eternity by Christmas first year, there is no way I have known them for 30 years. That’s just ridiculous.

For me, there's a few things going on.

1. I am old. When I was young, a year was a fifth of my entire experience of the world. Now it is 1/55th.

1. When I started having kids I got completely immersed in minutae because I was so busy with the minutae of work and their lives. I did not notice time passing and I was doing things day by day.

1. Covid completely fucked my sense of time because there was nothing in my diary. I did stuff every day but I didn't have a sense of this/that/the other happens in xyz weeks/months/years.

1. More recently I've been ill and am back to living week to week, month to month.

I'd love to get back to a proper sense of time. If there is such a thing.

Anything during the weirdness is just a great big blur. I don’t really know what happened to the decade before and I’m totally bemused by the age of dd - who was both born yesterday and also back in the mists of time.

Yes, parenthood. Where the days are long but the years are gone in the blink of an eye.

I wish I'd paid more attention.

Pubs now have back to the 2000s nights. I thought it was still the 90s. My mirror says otherwise!
I've been alive longer than I've probably got left is my take on it 🙈

I've played a 'fun game'/challenge with a few people. Name something that happened in 2021. It can be anything - personal, professional, news story. Just one thing that happened that year. It's strangely hard to do beyond the third lockdown and even then people struggle to say how long that lasted. It's like the year just didn't exist.

Days and months lasted forever when I was a kid/teen but now the years are passing at a rate of knots. It's frightening.

Oh and I hate to do this to you all but everyone will be talking about Christmas in 2 months.

I was just having a kitchen bop to Kylie Minogue's Spinning Around and realised that song was released in 2000!

Even worse when I started typing Kylie and my phone autosuggested Jenner 😭😭😭

I was going to party like it was 1999, but of course it was still the 80s when that was in the charts, so it was forever away in the future.

Somehow it's now further away in the past than it was in the future when we were all dancing to it when it was first released?

How can 1999 be nearly a quarter of a century ago?

How can there be adults, maybe even with kids in nursery, who never wrote the date when whatever the date was, the year began with a 19?

Covid completely did for my sense of time passing.

At some point, old people radio stations from my youth started playing the music of my youth & I never hear Jim Reeves etc.. who used to be on there, like they think I'm old.
When did that happen?

Lots of people saying they remember nothing from covid times. I had a baby in 2020 so remember it really clearly in terms of milestones, when baby was born, walked, started nursery, when mat leave ended etc. The covid stuff is almost irrelevant to me now. Just to offer another pov!

Apparently Jeffrey Epstein killing himself was 4 years ago. That seems bizarre.

Yes I can totally relate to this. Looking back at old family photos from when I was 13 and thinking of it as “not that long ago” then the realisation dawns on me that I’m older now than my mother was in the photos!

I have loads of dresses and blouses from the 20's

They are or very almost approaching a 100 years old

They don't look really old, they don't look 3 generations ago

In the 1970's when my grandmother occasionally wore them - they hung in the wardrobe with her normal clothes they were 40- 50 years old

Much like I have a pair of Doc Martens that are now 34 years old that I got in 6th form - in 10 years I will still be wearing them

It just blows my mind !

If I knew where you were I would slap you for mentioning it 😡

Well it's said time flows like a river rather than an arrow.

I was born in 1968. The Second World War ended 23 years before I was born.

The year 2000 was 23 years ago.

Does.
Not.
Compute.

"10 years ago" feels like it should be about say mid 90's. It's horrendous just how quickly time passes. As a child I felt like we were never off school - now they're never at school as the time passes so quickly. My mum's always said once the kids go back to school in September you blink and it's Christmas.

My dad passed in the early 2000's just as I was becoming an adult age wise - I think I'm sort of mentally stuck there as my time frame.

Everywhere you go shops and pubs are still playing music from the 80s and 90s though, so it's no wonder it feels like not that long ago.

Covid has totally messed with my internal timeline. It’s like life stopped then everything got messed up.

Re the years going quicker the older you get, it’s the toilet roll analogy.