Where Did My Time Go

For some reason, particularly in the past half year, it feels like time has been slowly speeding up, like skateboarding down a gradual hill, slowly at first, but then faster and faster until now its at a pace where I can barely keep in balance.

At the start of the year, I worked on a few direcitonal things at work, which involved writing design documents and leading sync-ups, something that was completely new and foreign to me and took up a lot of my energy. And then there was a period of crazy production work issues - data losses, critical reliability issues, dead locks - that had me feeling like a post-mortem technical writer rather than an engineer. And now, before both vacations to SF and Yellowstone, I quite literally scrambling and pushing code to meet a self-imposed deadline before I pack my bags and head off on a plane.

Outside of work, I feel like life has sped up too. At the start of the year, we would rarely have activities planned on weekends - we would play it by ear, a typical weekend involved grocery shopping, playing some video games and tennis, maybe bake something, and the occasional new restaurant trip. There was even one long weekend where we spent an entire day at home playing subnautica!

Now, it feels like there’s not enough weekends to schedule all the things we have planned. Ever since a month or so before SF, Grace was afraid she would be the slowest one while we were hiking (she wasn’t, she was one of the fastest), and we’ve basically been hiking every week. I also went climbing a few times in SF, and decided I would be more serious with it, and try to go at least once a week as well (it’s a 30 minute drive, so going there more regularly feels impractical). TEALS, a microsoft volunteer program to teach high school kids to code, is starting up in the fall, and they estimate at least 5 hours a week for lesson plans and teaching. I also want to spend more time to maintain this website. And do better on my finances (I have some thoughts about that I’ll write in a post too). I also wanted to read more. The list is long.

Now I feel like there’s so many things going on around me that I want to invest time in, and not nearly enough time to do all of them. In my ideal world, the day would be 100 hours long, and I’d spend a good few hours on all of my interests to get them to a state that I’m content with. Instead, at the end of every day lying in bed, I think about the journal entry I didn’t get a chance to write, or the work issue that I said I would get to but never did.

I guess to some people, what I’m saying is terribly obvious - there’s obviously not enough time in one’s life let alone in one’s day to do everything, and it’s pretty surprising that I’m only realizing this now at the old age of 24 (or is it 25? I think I lost count). I guess the idea that I would not be able to do everything I wanted is not foreign to me. I do remember thinking in high school, wow I probably would never watch all the episodes of Naruto, and never experience the same emotions and finality as someone who has when watching the last episode of a long-running anime. But I think what I felt then was just a very narrow specialization of what I feel now.

Just now, I’m beginning to realize that I would probably never be able to achieve all the goals I have for myself. I can probably pick and choose the things I work on, and throughout the course of my life get them to a state that is satisfiable to me, like maintain this journal for long enough, that I can read back and have continuity on how my life evolved from a young adult to an old grandpa - but to do this, means giving up on potentially tennis lessons and being the old grandpa that rallies impressively hard on Saturdays at the local tennis court in the park. Or maybe if I do both those things I would pay less attention to my finances or investments and end up with less money than I could have had.

I think this realization that I would need to make tradeoffs purely because there isn’t enough time in my life is a relatively new idea for me because growing up I never really had any real hobbies, besides playing League of Legends and other video games. I wouldn’t count those as hobbies, more as a form of entertainment or time killer, because I wasn’t really ambitious or motivated to get better. It was just something that gave me instant gratification and I did it without thinking. I think the other part is probably as I grow older, I get more and more responsibilities that pile up, which squeezes the time I have for my own hobbies.

Looking back, I do feel some regret in spending that much time playing games. I often times think what I would do if I had my current brain and memories and life experiences transported back to when I was a kid. Would definitely tell my parents to buy some apple and microsoft stock, but outside of that I think I would play less games. Would also probably grow up to be a pretty weird kid!

But anyway, that’s just day dreaming, and there’s nothing I can do about that now. Currently I am just trying my best to form good habits while I’m still relatively young in terms of being an adult out of schooling, incrementally improving on my hobbies, so that these habits can can carry me into a mature adult without any major regrets. Can’t imagine how much LESS time I’d have when I have kids (which isn’t even that far away)!