The Old Blog in the Desert

Dad told me that when I turned twenty-one, the world would seem to start speeding up. I thought he was joking, like one of his “dad wisdoms,” which came from Reader’s Digest or whatever he overheard at the barbershop.

But now, standing here at sixty-five with my shoes on the wrong feet and my car keys in the fridge, I can confirm the man knew something. Time does move faster as you get older, not because the days are shorter or the sun’s lazy, but because your brain stops paying attention.

Novelty slows time, routine speeds it up. When you’re young, every day’s an experiment, but when you’re older, every day’s déjà vu with a bad back and a balding spot.

I remember being eight, lying on my back in the grass, looking up at the clouds, and thinking an hour was forever. You could fit a whole childhood in an afternoon.

By the time I hit twenty-one, a year felt like a decent chunk of life. Then I blinked, and here I am, watching my reflection brush its teeth and wondering who this old guy is borrowing my toothbrush.

Dad used to say, “Son, life’s like a roll of toilet paper, the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes.”

I laughed at the time. Now I find myself counting squares.

It hit me last Tuesday morning, this “speeding up” thing. I was standing in the kitchen, halfway through my second cup of coffee, when I realized the first one was yesterday.

That’s how fast time’s moving now. I don’t measure days by sunsets anymore; I measure them by how often I refill Mr. Coffee.

So, I did what any rational man facing an existential crisis would do, I Googled it. Turns out, psychologists actually have a name for it–the “proportional theory.”

When you’re five, one year is twenty percent of your entire life. When you’re fifty, it’s only two percent.

So naturally, each year feels shorter. It’s not time that’s changing, it’s your perception of it.

That was mildly comforting for about twelve seconds, until I remembered I had no idea what I did the entire previous week. So I decided to experiment: if novelty slows time, I need to shake up my routine.

So, on Monday, I took a different route to work. Tuesday, I tried cooking something new. The recipe was for “easy Thai curry.”

I should’ve known “easy” was a lie.

Three hours later, my kitchen looked like a lemongrass murder scene, but I’ll tell you what, it did feel like a long night. Time stretched between chopping the ginger and scrubbing the turmeric off the counter.

By Wednesday, I felt encouraged. I thought, “Maybe this is it, perhaps novelty really can slow time.” Then Thursday showed up wearing the same pants as Wednesday, and I forgot what day it was again.

I told my friend Jerry about this over lunch. He’s my age, retired, and lives by the motto “If it’s broke, fight the urge to fix it by taking a nap.”

He laughed. “You’re overthinking it, Tom. Life doesn’t go faster. We just stop keeping track.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but I’d still like to stretch it out a little.”

“Stretching’s overrated,” he said, reaching for his fries. “I tried yoga once. Pulled a muscle I didn’t even know existed. You wanna slow time? Take a nap. Nothing feels longer than a bad nap.”

He wasn’t wrong.

The truth is, I’ve spent too much of my life trying to keep time in order. When I was younger, I scheduled everything, work, workouts, social events, even relaxation.

I lived by the clock. Now, I’m lucky if I remember which day trash pickup is.

But there’s something freeing in that, too. You start to realize that rushing is just a young man’s sport. At some point, life stops being about how much you can cram into a day and starts being about how much you can notice in one.

That’s what I tried next, noticing.

Very early on Friday morning, I sat on my porch with my coffee and did absolutely nothing. Not “nothing” in the lazy sense, but nothing in the intentional sense.

I just watched the world wake up.

The neighbor’s cat prowled the fence line like a tiny lion. The wind made the leaves shimmer silver-green.

A crow landed on the railing and gave me a look that said, “You’re still here, huh?”

And for a few rare moments, I felt time slow. The second hand on my old wall clock ticked softly, my mind stopped racing, and I wasn’t thinking about yesterday or tomorrow or whether I’d remembered to pay the water bill.

I was just there, sitting in a chair, alive in the present tense. It wasn’t grand or profound, but it was real.

That night, I had a dream about Dad.

He was younger than I ever remembered him, wearing that same plaid shirt he always wore when he worked on the car. I asked him if time felt fast for him, too.

He just smiled and said, “Depends what you’re doing with it.”

I woke up before he could explain, which I suppose is fitting. He always did like to leave me with a riddle.

That morning, after work, I went to the park. I hadn’t been there in years, not since my knees declared independence, but I figured, if novelty slows time, I might as well revisit something old and make it new again. This time I took my dog, Buddy.

There’s a small pond in the middle of that park where I used to take my son fishing. We never caught anything, which wasn’t the point, but just about being together.

This time, I sat alone, while Buddy rolled in the grass and sniffed out stuff. The water was still, except for the occasional ripple from a frog.

A young couple walked by holding hands, and I thought about how their world was probably moving at half the speed of mine. Every glance, every word, every heartbeat—brand new.

And I smiled, because that’s exactly how it should be.

Around lunchtime, I decided to buy myself something spontaneous. I went into a hobby store and came out with a sketchbook, some crayons, and no idea what to draw.

I spent the afternoon sketching the pond from memory. It looked more like a pancake with algae, but I didn’t care.

For those two hours, I wasn’t old, or bored, or stuck in routine, I was learning. And learning, I found, is the best kind of time travel.

Every crooked line reminded me of childhood. Every color brought back a forgotten day.

That night, I called my son. He lives in Washington state. I told him about my theory.

He laughed. “You’ve been on the internet again, haven’t you?”

“Maybe,” I said, “but I think there’s something to it. When’s the last time you did something new?”

He paused. “Honestly? I don’t remember. The days blur together.”

“Then do something different,” I told him. “Take the long way home. Try a weird recipe. Skip rocks. Anything that makes today stand out from yesterday.”

There was silence for a moment, and then he said softly, “You know, I think you might be onto something.”

It was the first time in years I heard him sound so young.

Since then, I’ve made a small vow, one new thing a day. It doesn’t have to be big.

Sometimes it’s as simple as trying a different cereal or calling an old friend. Sometimes it’s walking barefoot in the grass to remember what it feels like.

I started keeping a little notebook I call “The Slow Time Journal.” Each entry is just a line or two, a small record of moments that stand apart from the blur.

Like the day I sat through a thunderstorm without checking my phone, or the evening I tried salsa dancing on YouTube—badly. The time I wrote a letter instead of an email, and the morning I talked to the cashier about her tattoos.

Funny thing is, the more I do it, the slower the weeks feel, not in a dreary way, but in a lived way. Like I’ve added just a little more space between the moments.

Yesterday, I found an old photo of Dad and me, standing by his pickup truck. He’s got his arm around me, and we’re both grinning like we just got away with something.

On the back, in his handwriting, it says, “The secret to a long life isn’t time, it’s stories.” And I think that’s what he meant in my dream.

Life doesn’t speed up because the clock runs faster, but because we stop collecting stories. We trade curiosity for convenience, adventure for comfort, and discovery for repetition.

Every time we try something new, even something small, we add a new chapter to the same book. And suddenly, the pages don’t turn so fast.

So now, when I feel the days slipping by like marbles on a smooth table, I remind myself that novelty time isn’t about chasing thrills. It’s about noticing the extraordinary hiding in the ordinary.

Like the way rain smells before it falls, and the sky shifts from blue to gold to bruised purple at dusk, or the way laughter sounds when it comes from someone you love. Those are the moments that slow time, not because they last longer, but because they matter more.

This morning, I stood on my back porch with a cup of coffee, listening to the leaves drip after last night’s rain. And I thought about Dad again, his voice, his grin, his patience.

He was right. The world does seem to start speeding up after twenty-one, but the trick isn’t to chase it. It’s sitting still long enough to feel it move, then find one small thing—one unfamiliar, beautiful, or absurd thing, to notice before it goes.

That’s how you stretch a lifetime, one drip of novelty at a time.