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Original poster

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

166 replies

Timeandspaceidiocy · 15/08/2023 17:42

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 Grin

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?

OP posts:
SammyScrounge · 16/08/2023 00:05

AgnestaVipers · 15/08/2023 19:48

I keep having a jolt about 9/11 being over 20 years ago.
I agree that time went wonky around covid - I can barely remember anything with any clarity from that period.

I felt the same yesterday about the Omagh bombings. 25 years ago?Really?

HotSince82 · 16/08/2023 00:09

It's all been strange since 2012, significantly accelerated strangeness since Covid and no sign of slowing down at all...

I wish it was 2011 tbh. I'd have appreciated the normal passage of time a hell of a lot more, given the opportunity.

Anyotherdude · 16/08/2023 00:09

I feel like it’s 2021… but next year will still be 2021! I can’t get past COVID,

RestingMurderousFace · 16/08/2023 00:10

I seem to have lost a decade somewhere…

aromaticandfluffy · 16/08/2023 00:12

I always forget we are now in the 2020s not the 2000s or 2010s

Sisterthesame · 16/08/2023 00:24

There definitely feels like time before and after covid, it’s almost like I just try and forget those couple. I was seriously unwell with covid in the first wave and took months to recover and a friend very sadly died of covid, she was only in her thirties.

Everydayislikesundae · 16/08/2023 00:29

My teenage son was telling me how body mass and metabolic rate can determine how living things perceive time, living creatures who respond to threats (ie predators)quicker are lighter with a higher metabolic rate so time goes slower for them, so therefore for a child who has a higher metabolic rate than an adult time seems to be going by really slowly, whereas for us older folk time is whizzing by.
I'm 47 but I'm actually living in my 6th decade since I was born(70s,80s,90,00s,10s,20s) which seems scary.

theprimesuspect · 16/08/2023 00:50

It is 2021, to me.

saltinesandcoffeecups · 16/08/2023 01:03

I can help with this! Do remember when you were a kid and the summer lasted forever? The time between Christmas felt like it dragged on for eons? We’ll percentage wise it did!

If you’re 7 yo you’ve been alive for 84 months. The time between Christmas (12 months) is 14 % of your life at that point.

Now I do the math when you’re 20 (240 months old)
30(360 months)
50 (600 months) etc…

The percentage of your life between Christmas gets smaller and smaller each year.

I choose Christmas as an example but sadly after a certain point decades works just the same 😳

saltinesandcoffeecups · 16/08/2023 01:03

Chose* not choose

Thankweyou · 16/08/2023 01:15

Seems like 5 minutes the company I worked for was ensuring we were 'Y2K' compatible - and I worked at New Year from 1999 into 2000 to be on hand if our systems went down. It was almost a quarter of a century ago now.

Listening to the radio last week a report said something would be ready by 2032 - my first thought was to wonder if I would be alive then - then realised it's only 9 years away!!

CheetosCheerios · 16/08/2023 01:15

I’m about 10 years behind real time. I think I stopped processing time after about 2012, and covid completely messed things up for my poor pea brain.

Ageing seems to have massively affected my perception of time. My twenties dragged on forever. My thirties went quickly. I’m 46, but I swear I turned 40 last year. Scary!

louderthan · 16/08/2023 01:21

I think about past years in terms of what I was doing at the time: usually what shit job I was doing, what rubbish man I was obsessing over and whether I was depressed or not 😂

TakemedowntoPotatoCity · 16/08/2023 01:51

Since the year 2000, someone pressed the fast forward button. Now it's 23 years later and I've no idea how.

Disturbia81 · 16/08/2023 09:46

Yes.. the years are flying by. It's scaring me. That's why we have to live for NOW! Change things if you aren't happy, do that thing you've been meaning to do 🖤

PurpleButterflyWings · 16/08/2023 11:37

MistressoftheDarkSide · 15/08/2023 23:49

@PurpleButterflyWings

Yes I think he is…. He rolls his eyes at me sometimes because I simultaneously loathe Facebook but have to use it to promote my business, so I have a real conflict going on. Younger friends have urged me to use Instagram and TikTok and I just want to curl up and hide at the thought. For a start I’m rubbish at keeping up with stuff as it is, and I do feel “too old” tbh.

I feel sorry for creatives these days too - they can’t just create, they have to promote, market and sell across multiple platforms, and more than one of my artistic friends have just lost the joy in it all.

But that’s a whole other thread.

The time thing is fascinating though. I sometimes wonder if time travel will ever be feasible, or maybe it already has been in the future and we just don’t know yet….. I mean there is that theory that although we perceive time as linear, it’s actually all happening at the same time infinitely….. which makes my brain hurt just thinking about it….. maybe aliens are our future selves on package holidays from the future 😹

maybe aliens are our future selves on package holidays from the future. 😹

MIND. BLOWN! Shock

PurpleButterflyWings · 16/08/2023 11:38

SlightlygrumpyBettyswaitress · 15/08/2023 23:49

I'm 55, born in 1968.
What freaks me out is that I was born 23 years after the end of WW2.
23 years ago was 2000.

THIS is the kind of thing that freaks me out, and is freaking us ALL out @SlightlygrumpyBettyswaitress Shock

SoCentralRain · 16/08/2023 14:51

RunAwayTurnAwayRunAwayTurnAway · 15/08/2023 23:45

This thread should hit classics, @MNHQ.

Yes then we can all read it again in 5 years time and swear it was only created last month!

RunAwayTurnAwayRunAwayTurnAway · 16/08/2023 15:03

🤣🤣🤣🤣

Yep, relatable!

Unicorn2022 · 16/08/2023 17:13

I still feel like I'm in March 2020 - time has been really strange since then.

I used to look at 100 year old houses and think how quaint and ancient they were, but apparently my 1920s London house is now 100 years old.

It seems so strange to me that I am somehow the same age as old people.

I totally agree with you OP and feel really odd about the passing of time at the moment.

PurpleButterflyWings · 16/08/2023 19:53

I find it wild that when I was a little girl (late 1960s/early 1970s,) that my grandma who was just 'Nana B' to me, was alive when Charles Darwin was alive ... (He died in the 1880s!)

And I also find it gobsmacking that many people over 40 now, would have known someone who was around in the Victorian era!

MrsRachelDanvers · 16/08/2023 19:58

I was born in 1962 and am 60. Between 1962-1992 seemed to go on forever and the nineties felt totally different from the 1960s. From 1992-now seems to have taken 5 minutes and although there have been huge technological changes, it still feels more or less the same. But time rushes past. I read that as you age, time speeds up because each year is less of an overall proportion of your life.

Jamtartforme · 16/08/2023 20:44

I actually think I’m having a bit of an existential crisis over this at the moment 😬 I’m at the point of watching YouTube videos of my childhood CITV programmes and scrolling through endless nostalgia pages on Instagram…

fuchiaknickers · 16/08/2023 20:53

Same age as you, and feel the same.

I have always felt a bit this way though, even as a child! There’s this line in Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks where Mr Brown says “After all, this is the 20th Century”! And my mind was blown that it was still the 20th Century (only just - about 1995 😂) and then I remember saying to my mum “but the second world was was SO LONG AGO” and she was like “no, it was when I was a baby”

and then I think that 1945 was just 39 years before I was born. And I’m 38 now, so basically the same span of time I have lived through is the gap between WW2 and my lifetime.

It’s all so weird.

fuchiaknickers · 16/08/2023 20:57

Everydayislikesundae · 16/08/2023 00:29

My teenage son was telling me how body mass and metabolic rate can determine how living things perceive time, living creatures who respond to threats (ie predators)quicker are lighter with a higher metabolic rate so time goes slower for them, so therefore for a child who has a higher metabolic rate than an adult time seems to be going by really slowly, whereas for us older folk time is whizzing by.
I'm 47 but I'm actually living in my 6th decade since I was born(70s,80s,90,00s,10s,20s) which seems scary.

Will time slow down if I work out more and lose a few lb then? 🤔