I woke up today pretty hyped because it’s the weekend. Life is okay right now, although today also felt kind of like one of those “almost stepped in dog poop” days. I actually did almost step in dog poop, but luckily my friend warned me. Other than that, I’ve been thinking about something kind of depressing: time is going ridiculously fast. Days pass, months pass, and when I look back at school, it feels like we just started, but somehow we’re already more than a month in. My memory doesn’t even seem to work properly anymore. Everything just blends together.
I read something online probably from some random Google AI thing that said time feels faster as you get older. I really don’t like that idea, because then I start imagining myself at ninety years old, where one entire year feels like two seconds. At that point, technically, I’d only have about ten “real-feeling” years left. According to Google AI and also some kid sitting at my lunch table when you’re eleven, one year is already almost ten percent of the life you’ve lived. So every new year becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of your total life. I don’t exactly like thinking about that. You can almost feel the percentages going down. Apparently your brain starts making shortcuts because things become more familiar, so life feels faster and faster. I don’t totally understand the science behind it, but I can definitely feel it happening.
The weird part is that time only seems to go fast when I don’t want it to. If I’m building a LEGO set and actually enjoying myself, three hours disappear instantly. But when I’m doing math, I’ll literally sit there thinking, okay, three, two, one, I’m going to focus so hard that maybe I’ll teleport through time. Nothing happens. I try that for two minutes, and somehow those two minutes feel like a century. Then eventually I just have to do the math by force. So yeah, time is pretty weird.
I also woke up today not really wanting to get out of bed. I’ve been swimming a lot lately. My mom has always kept me going with swimming, and I guess swimming is kind of my thing now. I’ve been doing it for seven years. The problem is that when people hear that, they always ask, “So are you really fast?” And I’m like… not exactly. I’m somewhere around ninetieth in New England in some events, which honestly isn’t terrible, but after seven years, sometimes it still feels a little depressing to say that. Sometimes I imagine joining a completely new swim team where nobody knows me. I could walk in as a completely different version of myself, without anyone already having an idea of who I am. I’m not saying I’m actually going to switch teams. It’s just one of those weird thoughts I have.
Swimming used to feel like an escape. It was this separate little world where I could disappear for a while and everything felt simpler. Lately, though, that escape hasn’t felt quite the same. There aren’t as many places to disappear into anymore. And then, of course, life keeps going, which means I still have to write these extremely annoying essays. I complain about them, but the funny thing is that I’ve already written a lot. I wrote one about hamburgers, which was probably my favorite, and another one about Xbox that I also liked. People sometimes ask me how I write so much, and I have a very complicated system. There is exactly one step: you write. That’s basically it. You do some research, and then you write. People always say they don’t have ideas, and I honestly don’t completely understand that. Research something. Find something interesting. Start writing.
Maybe it’s easier for me because I write almost every day and I make this podcast too. I’m only eleven, so maybe that sounds strange, but after doing it enough, you stop waiting until you feel ready. You just start. It’s kind of like standing on a swimming block when someone says, “Take your mark.” You don’t get to stand there forever thinking about whether you feel ready. At some point, you jump. I guess that’s how I feel about a lot of things right now. Not everything feels great. I’m not exactly enjoying every part of life at the moment. Swimming has been frustrating, essays are annoying, and lately my mom has also been talking to me a lot about learning how to make money.
Her idea is basically that parents put a lot into their kids, but eventually you have to learn how to create something yourself instead of assuming money just appears. So I’ve been thinking about how I could actually make some money. Mowing lawns doesn’t seem to be getting me very far. I’ve also been looking at stocks, although starting with a few cents you found under a vending machine is probably not the fastest path to becoming rich. So that’s another problem I haven’t solved yet. Honestly, I don’t really know what I’m going to do. But I guess that’s the point. I’m eleven. I have time, even if time apparently keeps moving way too fast.
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