I know, I know, I’m the damn advice columnist around here. I realize this effectively means that I have all the answers (shhh, yes, it does). You believe I know it all, and even if I don’t, you’re content when I make it up.
I’m flattered.
I have a secret to share with you. Are you ready for this jelly? Lo and behold, I don’t have the solution for this one. Can you believe it? This one’s a real doozy. Trust me, I’m quite flummoxed myself.
But if anyone can snake a path through my dilemma, I know you can, slithering friends. I really do mean that in the nicest way possible.
Here goes.
***
Dear Everyone,
I don’t know how it happened or who overthrew whom for power, but man, I’ve got this serious problem with time, man. And I’m really gonna need your help.
I didn’t say timeliness (hush your mouth, Brandi). I said time.
You see, somewhere in my mid-20s, time, like, sped up. When I was in law school, the days (and classes) used to stretch their legs like ribbons of sand along deserted beaches, lacking clear definition of where the shore began and the water ended. I often wondered how on earth I would fill an entire day (groan!), despite the cases I had to read and outline, the research papers I had to complete, and the bar nights where I was obliged to drink away my student loan allocation for the semester.
Alas (for many reasons), those halcyon days and I have parted ways. And there’s also been a notable regime change in management at Father Time’s office as well.
Now, the days are feverish commuters on a freeway without a speed limit, going everywhere and nowhere, all at once. I don’t understand when or how everyone got on this freeway, but man, it might as well be a conveyor belt. On crack. Everyone is moving at the speed of drugs, including time. Not only are there not enough hours in the day, but there aren’t enough hours in my life. Wasn’t I 25 yesterday? Not technically, okay, but yes, I think I was.
This is where you come in. I need to know: How do I slow down time? I have so many things to do in life, and the lines are only deepening on my face.
I need time to slow down. Desperately. I need to put a harness on ye olde time thing. Will you teach me how?
- “Time In a Bottle “Was a Lie
I have the same struggle. Learning to say “no” gave me the freedom to balance my activities and give me some “me time.” Ironically when you learn to say “no,” you have a lot more fun when you say “yes.”
I always thought this had something to do with time periods relative to what we know. That is, when I was 5 years old, a year was a fifth of my life, a major chunk. Now that I’m 30, it’s just a mere thirtieth, just a whisper. The solution, then, would be to think about the past as little as possible and live in the moment. It isn’t working too well for me, though… Good luck.
Ah. I don’t know about slowing down time, but I do know about time traveling… All you need to do is to travel to one of the Earth’s axis, and run around it in the direction of time you wish to travel. The more laps around it you do, the more days you go forward or backwards in time. Once you have sufficiently moved around enough days, you can go back and have more time to do what it is before you need to do it…
Today back on Briggate I stopped and saw
the red hands on the Roman XII and V
those lovers won’t meet under any more,
glad stooping Father Time and I survive.