2. Time
Day 2 of the challenge. The previous post was written on day 2 too, as I hadn't done the first day. I've found a spare keyboard which has a letter /a/ that works, so that's a relief.
Today is the 2nd February 2020. That is a palindrome date, ie 02/02/2020. the last one was 31/11/1113. I think the next one will be 31/12/2113. So we only get them once in a lifetime unless we are highly enlightened souls who have traversed various lifetimes and got to experience more than 1 of these.
I have a five year diary so I can tell you what I was doing every year previously on this very day. On this day in 2016 I met a friend for lunch and went to salsa dancing in the evening with Kim (I'm not very good at it so that has fizzled out but Kim's a pro now). In 2017 I bought a penny whistle and made some goulash for dinner. In 2018 I watched Phantom Thread at the cinema in Brixton with my friend Laura (strange but good film, very interesting twist at the end). In 2019 I was in Amsterdam and ran 10.5 miles as was marathon training, and then went to see Massive Attack in the evening.
The passage of time is strange as you get older, and somebody compared it to a cone - when you're little it seems endless, you're on the wide bit of the cone. As you age it speeds up exponentially, whizzing past you in a kind of breeze til you get to the pointy bit at the top. When I went travelling in 2008 I was trying to slow down the passage of time by putting myself in absolutely new situations to confuse the neurons in my brain, but ultimately wherever you go there are still people, buildings, languages, food, cultural norms - the structure is quite the same but the content is a bit different, so time sped back up again after a while. The only other obvious way to slow down time and experience absolutely new things is by taking drugs, which is why I don't agree that drugs are bad if done sensibly and with curiosity.
I read a quote that said 'how we spend our days is how we spend our lives' - life is just a series of days, nothing else. It helps to think like that when things feel overwhelming sometimes.
Today is the 2nd February 2020. That is a palindrome date, ie 02/02/2020. the last one was 31/11/1113. I think the next one will be 31/12/2113. So we only get them once in a lifetime unless we are highly enlightened souls who have traversed various lifetimes and got to experience more than 1 of these.
I have a five year diary so I can tell you what I was doing every year previously on this very day. On this day in 2016 I met a friend for lunch and went to salsa dancing in the evening with Kim (I'm not very good at it so that has fizzled out but Kim's a pro now). In 2017 I bought a penny whistle and made some goulash for dinner. In 2018 I watched Phantom Thread at the cinema in Brixton with my friend Laura (strange but good film, very interesting twist at the end). In 2019 I was in Amsterdam and ran 10.5 miles as was marathon training, and then went to see Massive Attack in the evening.
The passage of time is strange as you get older, and somebody compared it to a cone - when you're little it seems endless, you're on the wide bit of the cone. As you age it speeds up exponentially, whizzing past you in a kind of breeze til you get to the pointy bit at the top. When I went travelling in 2008 I was trying to slow down the passage of time by putting myself in absolutely new situations to confuse the neurons in my brain, but ultimately wherever you go there are still people, buildings, languages, food, cultural norms - the structure is quite the same but the content is a bit different, so time sped back up again after a while. The only other obvious way to slow down time and experience absolutely new things is by taking drugs, which is why I don't agree that drugs are bad if done sensibly and with curiosity.
I read a quote that said 'how we spend our days is how we spend our lives' - life is just a series of days, nothing else. It helps to think like that when things feel overwhelming sometimes.
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