Time passages

Welcome to this week's Reno News & Review.

Where the hell does the time go? It's freaking November, and I really don't know where 2014 went. I like my life the way I live it. Between school, work and Fatal Encounters, I basically work three jobs, and I never lift my head up.

But there are things I'd hoped to cherish this year. For example, Hunter will graduate high school on June 12. This is the last year we'll probably ever live together, and I'd hoped to spend more time with him, but I sit at the dining room table and do my homework, while he's upstairs doing his. We both have hard times disengaging from our thoughts when we're concentrating, so our meal conversations together are frequently superficial or silent.

The pace I keep also seems to cut into the memory process, and I'm never quite sure what causes that. Is it because I only sleep a few hours a night, and sleep is supposed to be when we process information, filing it into permanent storage? Maybe it's because I'm getting older, which freaks me out a little bit. Combine that with the speed of life that keeps accelerating, and I feel a little like the world is passing by me.

So this time relativity perception—where each year seems to pass faster because we've got more experience of years—it's got an upper end, right? Maybe one of our older readers can fill me in on this. Does time keep accelerating even when we're into our 80s and 90s? Does it feel as though we can't savor the time we have because it passes by so quickly?

It's an interesting train of thought. If we don't spend our time doing things—living life—then it feels as though it's a life wasted. But if you live at full tilt, you end up with little in the long-term storage, and feeling as though it's a life wasted.

Hard to say what it all means. I tend to look for the symbolic or deeper meaning of things. People don't seem to kick and scream about going into that dark night when they reach a certain age. Does life just become too fast to keep up?