Thanks for your submission! For more Millennial content, join [our Discord server](https://discord.gg/VsfKKJBm).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Millennials) if you have any questions or concerns.*
To rationalize it myself, I think about the fact that a year of your life gets smaller in ratio to the life before. For example, 1 year when you’re 7 seems so long because it’s a whole 1/7 of your life so far. Versus, 1 year when you’re 30 is 1/30, significantly smaller.. and it just gets smaller and smaller as you get older. So, it just seems to go faster and faster. 🤷🏻♀️
On top of that, our brains typically trim memories of all the mundane sameness from day-to-day. When you're a kid each month has a different theme and what not, but as an adult it all starts running together.
Also, COVID Lockdown didn't help anyone with accurate assessments of time lol
Makes sense, everything being an adventure when you’re a kid versus not so much as an adult.
Forreal, I still can’t believe it’s 2024, let alone already July.
Childhood, adolescence and early adulthood is marked by many big changes and novelty often comes in spades.
It's a pretty natural trajectory to have more time between novel experiences as you age and to settle into a different type of life rhythm, which has a way of making time seem to 'go fast'
The dark side (if you could call it that)of this may show up as a midlife crisis, should your psyche pull at certain threads
That's why it's helpful to do and plan things that are meaningful to you / completely new / push your experiential homeostasis off kilter, etc.
I reckon the antidote for a malaise of this kind, is facing yourself and redefining and building the next phase of your life with meaning and hopefully some new experiences.
Listened to an interesting podcast that put an actionable spin on these ideas: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2v76fnl4jeyQokuKoMNgtC?si=bQ_T1x4KSI-a1eMZU2B_QA
I truly think the key to living a long life is novelty. It helps you retain memories and retaining memories is the way to be fully conscious of the length of life you have lived.
That’s true, weird how the brain works. Also we mark time with novel experiences that form memories. When you are young so much seems new, as you age every day is the same, so the feeling of time passing isn’t there.
Somewhere out there is a paper that says something to the effect that when we are younger we have so many new things to experience for the first time. This tends to “lengthen” your perception of the passage of time. Long summer days as a kid and a teen tend to last longer as your brain is writing down these new experiences.
As we get older, and life gets more monotonous, so does the perception of time gets shorter. We’ve done it all, often many times over, and there’s not so much information being burned into the hard drives that are our brains.
It’s like that road trip to a far away place. It seems to take so much longer to get there than the return trip as our minds aren’t processing new information, making it fly by.
Some would say, keep learning and searching for new experiences, and you may never grow old.
The only way to slow down time is to do more memorable and new things.
As a kid you’re full of new and exciting experiences and strong emotions so that time sticks with you, as an adult you days string together as boring uneventful weeks where every day is just work and home, so when you look back you just see the exciting events becaus the rest was just busy work like work and chores and stuff.
If you actively try to make memories and then actively take time at the end of the week to recall them and remember them it increases the likelihood of slowing down time relatively.
Spend more time actively remembering and actively trying to make new memories instead of just living day to day.
There are about 118 billion people who have lived before you and thought the same thing... Most of them are dead and gone. We will be too, fairly soon.
Soak up the sun while you've still got a seat on this ride.👍
Exactly. Not here for a long time, but we're here for a good time.
In the grand scheme of things, everyone posting here is inconsequential to the rest of the world.
Accept it and you'll feel a lot better about life.
I’m turning 38 in September and I’m exactly the same as you. 1999 for me is the greatest year for music and movies. I honestly think about it so much. I don’t feel like I was happiest then as I wasn’t loving life at school but the pop culture and everything that year has impacted my life more than anything
I constantly feel like 2008-2024 flew by in a heartbeat and it’s terrifying.
I kind of go with the idea that as we’re younger obviously a year is longer and more formative to us than in our 20s but I can honestly remember conversations and things from 20+ years ago that feel like yesterday. It’s really quite distressing how much I feel I’ve wasted my 20s and 30s
For me it was boybands, Britney, 10 things I hate about you, she’s all that, wanting to watch American pie but not being allowed to and LIVIN LA VIDA LOCA BABY
I turned 38 last month and yes, it’s super weird. But not in a bad way I think!
You couldn’t pay me enough to go back and do it again though. It was fun being a kid, but my teens and 20s were kind of miserable…I am so much happier and more confident at this point in my life and I’m actually looking forward to my 40s. 🙂
Time is flying for me but I could never go back. I hated being a kid, being powerless. Probably why I rebelled so hard. Feel like my real life began in my 20s. The world may be burning around me but I've never had the type of personal stability I have now at any other point in my life. I'll be 40 next year and while I'm not some super happy everything's perfect I'm in the best place of my life type person, I'm really looking forward to the next decade.
I can relate. When you're powerless as a kid/youth without any money or the means to live by yourself, life can really suck. As an adult with a job, life can still suck, but at least you have the ability to get yourself in a safe and secure place. Not so when you're broke and dependent on someone else.
I’m your age and feel like I was just getting comfortable with the idea of being in my 30s and now, bam 40. I try not to dwell on it because there’s no time travel and if I want to keep living I have to get older. So be it, try to make the most of every day
I watched a video on YouTube a while ago about this. Basically when we got older, we started coasting through instead of actively participating in life. That's why time flies. Studying/learning new things is one of the best way to "slow" it down.
Totally been feeling this more recently too. I turned 39 last week and I cried yesterday because I felt so sad about not being able to watch 90’s Nickelodeon…😂 I was reading another thread and it prompted me to listen to the ‘adventures of Pete and Pete’ theme music on YouTube….well, this just set me off and then me and my husband were laughing because we both just wanted to be kids again. I think a lot of us millennials had the privilege of growing up in relatively ‘safe’ global circumstances. We’re the last to grow up without the burdens of social media and mobiles but we’re still able to enjoy the advantages of other technologies. The last few years has felt bleak…I think globally people are really feeling it….at least this is what I’m putting it down to.
Shiiiiiiiiiiit man, i feel the opposite, like time's been way longer than that. When I think of myself as a teenager it feels like a fucking THOUSAND years ago, there's been so many experiences and phases of life that have come and gone since then. new people, friends, places, passions have come and gone so many times that it feels like those times from the late 90s / teenage years were from someone elses life long ago
Working professionals barely have a few hours a day to live, a few holidays, and short weekends.
90s were great. Everything was new and exciting. We didn't have much but when we did it was epic. These days we're quite sensitized being able to have instant gratification, whereas then all things were manually done. We couldn't even see a movie until we rented and rewinded it, now its instantaneous on netflix.
90s was fun because of Michael Jackson's moonwalk, Street Fighter 2, roller blades, Karate Kids, Surf Ninjas, Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, Terminator 2, and Blockbuster Video. Lots of fun during this era, there was some sense of optimism things were getting exciting and things were very organic and less designed to sell. Since we had VHS watching we also enjoyed older movies like Starwars and 80s movies like Back to the Future.
Yeah I absolutely feel time is moving faster. So to slow it down I do things on weekdays, not view weekday as a modest indoor day with excuses to not go out.
I take comfort in the fact that every human that has ever lives has likely had a similar experience.
The transition from childhood to adulthood is jarring, but it sure beats the alternative.
Life has slowed down a lot for me since I started doing music and now each song is a stamp in time, two years ago feels like ten years ago cos there’s always progression and so much has happened.
I’ve been feeling the same nostalgic and sentimental way for a number of years. Time has definitely flown by too quickly. Life is short and in a blink we will be 50. Another blink and we will be old and wrinkly. Life was happier in the 90’s for sure. Time went slower. But what can we do? No Time Machine can take us back. We are stuck here and going on a one way trip buddy!
I don't understand this. For me time has been an agonizing crawl, where every year is worse than the last, and it only looks like it's going to get worse and worse.
I was a square when I was a teenager, and I thought I was doing everything right. I have nothing to show for it, and my prospects continue to get worse and worse. Every moment is a pointless agony.
Totally agreed. 34M. I am currently in the season of realizing my mom is a narcissist, when just 3 years ago I almost admired her for her advice and support. I’m losing friends continuously or they are rotating out into less frequent exchanges. It’s weird but every year since 2020 has gotten worse in more ways than better.
A lot of things made the world worse since 1999. Two of our longest wars ever, tanking the US’s image and treasury. 9/11, tanking our sense of security. The gfc, stunting at least one generation. The maga movement. The pandemic. Inflation. The possibility that US democracy could end this year.
In 1999, the worst we had to worry about was Lewinski, and y2k. The internet was ascendant, our deficit was going away, we were enjoying a peace dividend, the job market was booming, our natural adversaries had collapsed, democracy was strong, prices were low, and our national image was amazing. It was such an innocent time.
Your perception of time is relative to how long you've been alive to perceive it.
At 38, half of my life is 19 years. At 19, half of my life was only 9.5 years. 19 years now feels the same to me as 9.5 years felt to me then.
At 60, 30 years will feel the same as 19 years feels now.
Time rules over us without mercy, not caring if we're healthy or ill, hungry or drunk, Russian, American, beings from Mars. It's like a fire. It could either destroy us or keep us warm. That's why every FedEx office has a clock. Because we live or we die by the clock. We never turn our back on it. And we never, ever allow ourselves the sin of turning our backs on time!
It takes me a bit but I can remember almost everything. Not perfectly but. Strongly. I still remember laying in my bed around 2 or 3 and thinking “this will all seem like a dream one day.
The years have stacked up a *lot*.
Someone once told me time passes like a roll of toilet paper. It unravels faster and faster the closer you get to the end. Obvious “and they’re both shitty” joke
I think a large part, at least for my self, is that my life is full. When I was a kid, there were times where I was extremely bored. But the options for things to do these days is massive. When I have free time, I can game on a multitude of devices with thousands of games, stream thousands of movies or TV shows, and none of it requires leaving the house. I also like to cook awesome food on the grill and smoker.
Ever day is full, rarely a dull moment, and most of the day is pretty enjoyable - even most of the things I do at work are fun/interesting. Time flies in that state.
38 here. I miss the innocence of pre-2000. It was all about friends, movies, music, middle school football games. Then high school came along with the boys and partying, and all that innocence went straight out the window. I started suffering from depression around that time, and life was just not as bright as it was before high school.
My theory is that humans experience time as a percentage. Example, at 5 years old, 1 year is 20% of your life and feels like forever as a result. At age 40, 1 year is 2.5% of your life and it feels *so fast.*
To me I feel like I had a baby last year, but then this familiar-looking 2nd grader just asked me if Spanish is a colonizer language too. I mean zamn. It's fast af.
It’s funny to me that 1999 is the year that sticks out to you. I’m an older millennial, 1982, and for me 1994 is the year. I wonder what it is about those pre-teen/early teen years that we go back to. Maybe it’s before all the teenage BS, old enough to think a bit more adult-like, but you. G enough that the bulldozer of responsibility and adult life hasn’t plowed through us. Idk.
I keep thinking I’m 31 but I’m turning 34 in August.
It really trips me up because I think “I have more time” but 3 years have gone by.
Mind you, I had a lot of trauma when I was 31, that I’m probably still dealing with and maybe that’s the reason I keep thinking it’s still 2021? Idk
I have a lot of things going on. Every day is very long. I go to work early, work an average 14 hours and then come home and spend my nights with my kids. I cannot believe it’s only the beginning of July.
I’ll be 38 in October but luckily I guess for me late 90s-00s I was an odd duck with barely any friends lol. I do miss the shows. The newness of the internet etc but ugh the time itself. I’m glad I’m past that.
I hear you. I’m 40 now. I miss the 90’s and the 2000’s.
People lived more in the moment and seemed to be less in their bubble, on average.
Politics wasn’t quite as toxic.
Music was still good.
I didn’t have to worry about putting on weight or my LDL cholesterol level going up.
Teenage years felt like a snails pace, my 20s just seemd to zoom by, while I miss the laidbackness of the 90s I don't miss being an adolescent, I enjoy not being age restricted.
Time moves at the same speed on Earth. Your perception of time seems to speed up because each future month or year represents a smaller and smaller % of the time you have experienced as you age.
I have come across this quote that really resonates with me;
"The world only goes 'round by misunderstanding"
The quote, for me, touches upon a very unique observation regarding the passing of time...it appears that when there is misunderstanding the world seems to spin faster and we struggle to hang on so to speak, this spinning may make us waver or feel a naseua..
But then there are those moments of pure understanding.. where not only does time seem to slow down.. or even stop... It is as if for those brief moments time ceases to exist at all!
This is all to say the observation of time is a completely subjective experience...
Also shout out Zeno's Paradoxes.
Yes ME. You and I are in the exact same boat except I was born in 1990 and often look back on my childhood and adolescence as the most beautiful times in my life. But I don’t know if it’s just nostalgia talking or if it was really as perfect as I remember it being
It's not the rotating. It's the revolutions.
I feel like the older I get the slower and slower the days go by, but the faster and faster the years go by. Doesn't make logical sense, but that's how it seems.
For me personally it’s been a wild 4 years.
* Found out we were pregnant THE DAY government covid shutdowns were announced.
* Pretty much all of 2020 being a dumpster fire.
* Kiddo was in the hospital for three weeks after being born (is great now)
* 2021 parenting joys
* 2022 wife got pregnant again, unplanned.
* 2022 was just busy with work and trying to raise a toddler with a pregnant wife.
* 2023 had two dogs pass away, drama at work, bought a new home, sold previous home and everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong, all while navigating two children!
* 2024 got off to a good start but holy fuck this election is going to give me a heart attack
My life is going slow AF because I’m constantly seeking new and novel experiences. That’s what helps wrinkle the brain so you don’t just discard the grind
It's because your brain has processed so many basic situations/functions so many times, it takes less time for you to process it now. Thus speeding up your perception of time.
older millennial here (more Xennial). i have found that my mid-forties is teenage-esque. there is quite a bit of angst. change in your body, mind, outlook on life. only recently have i started to embrace that in a fun, YOLO kind of way. so my advice would be to think of of the 2020’s like your new, improved version of the 1990’s. it’s a do over. hell your back might hurt but at least you’ve got the benefit of wisdom this time around. all this to say: try not to think about the past so much and live for the moment.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQsqH48bkRs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQsqH48bkRs)
I first saw this episode when I was 10 and I *thought* I understood what Edina was talking about. But oh God, do I understand now.
Same. I turn 38 in September. I have strong nostalgia for the late 90s early 00s as well. I’m grateful that we have such easy access to the music, movies and tv shows from that time, it helps keep the memories alive. Chuck Klosterman’s book The Nineties, and the Netflix documentary about Woodstock 99 are great and worth a read and a watch. They provide some good insights into the good and the bad of the 90s. It’s up to us to learn from the past and try to make the future the best we can. Hopefully we still have a lot of living left to do.
We get into a routine. Time passes quickly when you are busy- you focused on work and errands, day after day. It feels even faster if you have kids because all your attention is on them.
Take the time to stop and enjoy glimmers of certain moments around you (being solo in nature and taking breaks from work for example). Get off social media and electronics. Time moves slower when you take part in that mindfulness.
I wish I was 25 again and took that time to enjoy. It feels like I never get me-time anymore.
Someone said if they made a show like “that 70’s show” now, it would be “that 00’s show”. Because it was made 28 years after 1970.
Made me feel old as hell when I read that comment.
10000%. I’m the same age and I’m completely starting over alone right now due to illness and some other heavy life circumstances. I lost a lot of people throughout the pandemic and since for those reasons so now I’m doing it all alone and it’s…rough to reconcile. At least you have success in your corner! That’s a huge leap in the right direction.
Wonder about it? I’ve been in an existential crisis about it for 5 years now. I swear I was 27 like 3 years ago… now I’m a 43 year old man? The hell?
Also, 2025-2030 are the sorts of years old sci-fi movies used in the 80’s, so that’s weird.
i live in a country as an adult that i wasn’t born in or grew up in, so life feels pretty dense day to day. Almost surreal. It feels very rich sometimes, even to an overwhelming degree. maybe it going by so fast has to do with predictability and stable conditions for the brain and it not being tested or challenged enough to re-appraise your perception of time.
81 here and I wonder how time passed so fast all the time. I am nostalgic for the 90s as well, if only for the amount of hope we had back then. I miss that feeling. We don't have it anymore, everything after 9/11 has sucked.
I grew up in poverty, so my life really didn't start until after high school. It was such a dividing line that I could recall most things after that time with ease but couldn't remember hardly anything during my childhood. Didn't watch movies, go to concerts, or watch TV unless it was a local channel.
I will say though, the world seemed more hopeful about the future before 9/11. As well as the overall quality of things as been diminishing especially since 2020
Read up about Simulacra theory by Baudrillard. Read up about videogame Iraq war (first televised war). Things in the 90s felt more real nowadays we are moving into a Simulacra reality.
It's referred to as time dilation.
The perception of time speeds up as you have more years of past life experiences & memories to draw on.
When you're 9 years old half of your life's memories span 4.5 years, of which you can actually only accurately remember back to maybe 3-4 of them, and not all of them, only cornerstone memories.
Favorite color, stuffed animals, food, etc.
By the time you're 20 you have half life memories going for 10 years, of which you can accurately recount major portions of it as long as you weren't traumatized in those periods.
So on and so forth.
The more years you live, the more memories you amass, but the brain cannot consider that span of time for the span it is without basically driving itself mad, so it condenses the span of memories down to almost immediate ramifications. This is time dilation.
The older I get, the faster time moves. It's terrifying. Even moment to moment, I feel like I have less hours in a day than I ever did before.
I'm 37 and so far this has been the freakiest/worst thing about aging. I don't mind looking older and I can tolerate the joint pain. But for the first time, I really feel like I don't have enough time to do everything I want to, and I hate it.
Honestly no.. I have lived a ton of life. I have done so much and it feels like time stretches out behind me. I have grown and changed and been so many different things in my 36 years.
I do get nostalgic about the 90s when I see images and videos and realized how much the world really has changed. I do sometimes miss the simplicity and innocence of childhood.
I once had a customer who said she was sitting with a woman in hospice who described it like this. Life is like a full toilet paper roll. The paper runs faster the further into the roll you go. Morbid? Maybe, but it has stuck in my mind. I was in my early 20s when I was told this, and it seems to be true. I love how calm my life is, but I also have this overwhelming want for adventure, knowing that my youth is gone. However, I'm not old yet.
Thanks for your submission! For more Millennial content, join [our Discord server](https://discord.gg/VsfKKJBm). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Millennials) if you have any questions or concerns.*
To rationalize it myself, I think about the fact that a year of your life gets smaller in ratio to the life before. For example, 1 year when you’re 7 seems so long because it’s a whole 1/7 of your life so far. Versus, 1 year when you’re 30 is 1/30, significantly smaller.. and it just gets smaller and smaller as you get older. So, it just seems to go faster and faster. 🤷🏻♀️
For some reason, my brain thanks you for this.
for some reason mine too....
On top of that, our brains typically trim memories of all the mundane sameness from day-to-day. When you're a kid each month has a different theme and what not, but as an adult it all starts running together. Also, COVID Lockdown didn't help anyone with accurate assessments of time lol
Makes sense, everything being an adventure when you’re a kid versus not so much as an adult. Forreal, I still can’t believe it’s 2024, let alone already July.
Fuck, we’ll be in ‘25 in 6 months
Oh my lanta, I remember the turn of the century.. you’re telling me that we’re already almost a quarter through the next one!?
Childhood, adolescence and early adulthood is marked by many big changes and novelty often comes in spades. It's a pretty natural trajectory to have more time between novel experiences as you age and to settle into a different type of life rhythm, which has a way of making time seem to 'go fast' The dark side (if you could call it that)of this may show up as a midlife crisis, should your psyche pull at certain threads That's why it's helpful to do and plan things that are meaningful to you / completely new / push your experiential homeostasis off kilter, etc. I reckon the antidote for a malaise of this kind, is facing yourself and redefining and building the next phase of your life with meaning and hopefully some new experiences. Listened to an interesting podcast that put an actionable spin on these ideas: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2v76fnl4jeyQokuKoMNgtC?si=bQ_T1x4KSI-a1eMZU2B_QA
I truly think the key to living a long life is novelty. It helps you retain memories and retaining memories is the way to be fully conscious of the length of life you have lived.
This is exactly how i rationalize it in my head
That’s true, weird how the brain works. Also we mark time with novel experiences that form memories. When you are young so much seems new, as you age every day is the same, so the feeling of time passing isn’t there.
Somewhere out there is a paper that says something to the effect that when we are younger we have so many new things to experience for the first time. This tends to “lengthen” your perception of the passage of time. Long summer days as a kid and a teen tend to last longer as your brain is writing down these new experiences. As we get older, and life gets more monotonous, so does the perception of time gets shorter. We’ve done it all, often many times over, and there’s not so much information being burned into the hard drives that are our brains. It’s like that road trip to a far away place. It seems to take so much longer to get there than the return trip as our minds aren’t processing new information, making it fly by. Some would say, keep learning and searching for new experiences, and you may never grow old.
The only way to slow down time is to do more memorable and new things. As a kid you’re full of new and exciting experiences and strong emotions so that time sticks with you, as an adult you days string together as boring uneventful weeks where every day is just work and home, so when you look back you just see the exciting events becaus the rest was just busy work like work and chores and stuff. If you actively try to make memories and then actively take time at the end of the week to recall them and remember them it increases the likelihood of slowing down time relatively. Spend more time actively remembering and actively trying to make new memories instead of just living day to day.
Paper towel effect in reverse.
One year to a 10 year old is 10% of their life One year to a 40 year old is only 2.5% of their life
I imagine it has something to do with your brain and how we adapt to the world and are on autopilot a lot of the time.
There are about 118 billion people who have lived before you and thought the same thing... Most of them are dead and gone. We will be too, fairly soon. Soak up the sun while you've still got a seat on this ride.👍
I like that solace
But not too much sun and remember to "Wear Sunscreen."
“The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.”
Aging is actually physically similar to cooking meat, the sun is slow roasting us.
Time to get drunk on the beach and slap an ass or too, my man!
Exactly. Not here for a long time, but we're here for a good time. In the grand scheme of things, everyone posting here is inconsequential to the rest of the world. Accept it and you'll feel a lot better about life.
I’m turning 38 in September and I’m exactly the same as you. 1999 for me is the greatest year for music and movies. I honestly think about it so much. I don’t feel like I was happiest then as I wasn’t loving life at school but the pop culture and everything that year has impacted my life more than anything I constantly feel like 2008-2024 flew by in a heartbeat and it’s terrifying. I kind of go with the idea that as we’re younger obviously a year is longer and more formative to us than in our 20s but I can honestly remember conversations and things from 20+ years ago that feel like yesterday. It’s really quite distressing how much I feel I’ve wasted my 20s and 30s
The iphone came out in 2007, smartphones took off from then… wasting time for everyone..wondering if thats related somehow 🤷♂️
It was the Lord of the Rings hype and Matrix, wasn't it?
For me it was boybands, Britney, 10 things I hate about you, she’s all that, wanting to watch American pie but not being allowed to and LIVIN LA VIDA LOCA BABY
I'm sorry. We just can't be friends.
I shall live la lavida loca anyway
haha
Same
Well, the years start coming and they don’t stop coming 🫠
Now I can’t stop whistling 😵💫
I turned 38 last month and yes, it’s super weird. But not in a bad way I think! You couldn’t pay me enough to go back and do it again though. It was fun being a kid, but my teens and 20s were kind of miserable…I am so much happier and more confident at this point in my life and I’m actually looking forward to my 40s. 🙂
My misery in elementary school, Hs, and college could easily be avoided if I could go back and do it again. It’s a double edge sword
Time is flying for me but I could never go back. I hated being a kid, being powerless. Probably why I rebelled so hard. Feel like my real life began in my 20s. The world may be burning around me but I've never had the type of personal stability I have now at any other point in my life. I'll be 40 next year and while I'm not some super happy everything's perfect I'm in the best place of my life type person, I'm really looking forward to the next decade.
I can relate. When you're powerless as a kid/youth without any money or the means to live by yourself, life can really suck. As an adult with a job, life can still suck, but at least you have the ability to get yourself in a safe and secure place. Not so when you're broke and dependent on someone else.
Exactly for some of us, a roof and food is a huge improvement
I’m your age and feel like I was just getting comfortable with the idea of being in my 30s and now, bam 40. I try not to dwell on it because there’s no time travel and if I want to keep living I have to get older. So be it, try to make the most of every day
I watched a video on YouTube a while ago about this. Basically when we got older, we started coasting through instead of actively participating in life. That's why time flies. Studying/learning new things is one of the best way to "slow" it down.
That is very interesting. Thank you for sharing this!
Totally been feeling this more recently too. I turned 39 last week and I cried yesterday because I felt so sad about not being able to watch 90’s Nickelodeon…😂 I was reading another thread and it prompted me to listen to the ‘adventures of Pete and Pete’ theme music on YouTube….well, this just set me off and then me and my husband were laughing because we both just wanted to be kids again. I think a lot of us millennials had the privilege of growing up in relatively ‘safe’ global circumstances. We’re the last to grow up without the burdens of social media and mobiles but we’re still able to enjoy the advantages of other technologies. The last few years has felt bleak…I think globally people are really feeling it….at least this is what I’m putting it down to.
Fuck I remember Pete and Pete - something about that theme song also. Damn now I have to listen to it…
Shiiiiiiiiiiit man, i feel the opposite, like time's been way longer than that. When I think of myself as a teenager it feels like a fucking THOUSAND years ago, there's been so many experiences and phases of life that have come and gone since then. new people, friends, places, passions have come and gone so many times that it feels like those times from the late 90s / teenage years were from someone elses life long ago
Working professionals barely have a few hours a day to live, a few holidays, and short weekends. 90s were great. Everything was new and exciting. We didn't have much but when we did it was epic. These days we're quite sensitized being able to have instant gratification, whereas then all things were manually done. We couldn't even see a movie until we rented and rewinded it, now its instantaneous on netflix. 90s was fun because of Michael Jackson's moonwalk, Street Fighter 2, roller blades, Karate Kids, Surf Ninjas, Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, Terminator 2, and Blockbuster Video. Lots of fun during this era, there was some sense of optimism things were getting exciting and things were very organic and less designed to sell. Since we had VHS watching we also enjoyed older movies like Starwars and 80s movies like Back to the Future. Yeah I absolutely feel time is moving faster. So to slow it down I do things on weekdays, not view weekday as a modest indoor day with excuses to not go out.
I’m gonna be real- 2019-2024 does not feel the same speed of 2014-2019.
Yup. COVID robbed us…i guess it’s worsr to have had your teenage years robbed than your 30’s…
I feel the same about 1999. That would be the year I time traveled back to. For sure.
The matrix came out that year. So did office space. Good year
I take comfort in the fact that every human that has ever lives has likely had a similar experience. The transition from childhood to adulthood is jarring, but it sure beats the alternative.
Life has slowed down a lot for me since I started doing music and now each song is a stamp in time, two years ago feels like ten years ago cos there’s always progression and so much has happened.
I’ve been feeling the same nostalgic and sentimental way for a number of years. Time has definitely flown by too quickly. Life is short and in a blink we will be 50. Another blink and we will be old and wrinkly. Life was happier in the 90’s for sure. Time went slower. But what can we do? No Time Machine can take us back. We are stuck here and going on a one way trip buddy!
I read some research that by the time we reach 26, we’ve already perceived experiencing half of our life, no matter how long after that we live
I don't understand this. For me time has been an agonizing crawl, where every year is worse than the last, and it only looks like it's going to get worse and worse. I was a square when I was a teenager, and I thought I was doing everything right. I have nothing to show for it, and my prospects continue to get worse and worse. Every moment is a pointless agony.
Totally agreed. 34M. I am currently in the season of realizing my mom is a narcissist, when just 3 years ago I almost admired her for her advice and support. I’m losing friends continuously or they are rotating out into less frequent exchanges. It’s weird but every year since 2020 has gotten worse in more ways than better.
A lot of things made the world worse since 1999. Two of our longest wars ever, tanking the US’s image and treasury. 9/11, tanking our sense of security. The gfc, stunting at least one generation. The maga movement. The pandemic. Inflation. The possibility that US democracy could end this year. In 1999, the worst we had to worry about was Lewinski, and y2k. The internet was ascendant, our deficit was going away, we were enjoying a peace dividend, the job market was booming, our natural adversaries had collapsed, democracy was strong, prices were low, and our national image was amazing. It was such an innocent time.
OMG I first read it as "the ma**n**ga movement" and was really wondering how, exactly, comic books were tanking the US' image XD
I don't know about you but Columbine and the OKC bombing had me pretty uneasy at that time.
Innocence. I think we lost that with the internet.
Your perception of time is relative to how long you've been alive to perceive it. At 38, half of my life is 19 years. At 19, half of my life was only 9.5 years. 19 years now feels the same to me as 9.5 years felt to me then. At 60, 30 years will feel the same as 19 years feels now.
Not me, it passed at what I would define a normal and expected speed
I swear to God I blinked and 10 years went by. I'm glad I'm not the only one. I hate it so much. Time is absolutely relentless.
Time rules over us without mercy, not caring if we're healthy or ill, hungry or drunk, Russian, American, beings from Mars. It's like a fire. It could either destroy us or keep us warm. That's why every FedEx office has a clock. Because we live or we die by the clock. We never turn our back on it. And we never, ever allow ourselves the sin of turning our backs on time!
It takes me a bit but I can remember almost everything. Not perfectly but. Strongly. I still remember laying in my bed around 2 or 3 and thinking “this will all seem like a dream one day. The years have stacked up a *lot*.
You believe it is the year 1999. In reality it’s probably closer to 2199.
Matrix reference lol
Someone once told me time passes like a roll of toilet paper. It unravels faster and faster the closer you get to the end. Obvious “and they’re both shitty” joke
… your happiness peaked at 13???
Yes, DarkLordFag666…
Cool 😎
I'm pretty sure my naps have something to do with this
That’s so interesting. I feel the same as you. Including 1999!
I think a large part, at least for my self, is that my life is full. When I was a kid, there were times where I was extremely bored. But the options for things to do these days is massive. When I have free time, I can game on a multitude of devices with thousands of games, stream thousands of movies or TV shows, and none of it requires leaving the house. I also like to cook awesome food on the grill and smoker. Ever day is full, rarely a dull moment, and most of the day is pretty enjoyable - even most of the things I do at work are fun/interesting. Time flies in that state.
38 here. I miss the innocence of pre-2000. It was all about friends, movies, music, middle school football games. Then high school came along with the boys and partying, and all that innocence went straight out the window. I started suffering from depression around that time, and life was just not as bright as it was before high school.
My theory is that humans experience time as a percentage. Example, at 5 years old, 1 year is 20% of your life and feels like forever as a result. At age 40, 1 year is 2.5% of your life and it feels *so fast.* To me I feel like I had a baby last year, but then this familiar-looking 2nd grader just asked me if Spanish is a colonizer language too. I mean zamn. It's fast af.
As I sit on my couch scrolling on my phone after I “worked from home” which was basically scrolling on my phone but in front of my laptop? No.
It’s funny to me that 1999 is the year that sticks out to you. I’m an older millennial, 1982, and for me 1994 is the year. I wonder what it is about those pre-teen/early teen years that we go back to. Maybe it’s before all the teenage BS, old enough to think a bit more adult-like, but you. G enough that the bulldozer of responsibility and adult life hasn’t plowed through us. Idk.
I’m pretty sure 1999 was the last good year
Just seems like/feels like ‘99 was *jam packed* with culture ! Like damn did we get some pop culture that year.
I keep thinking I’m 31 but I’m turning 34 in August. It really trips me up because I think “I have more time” but 3 years have gone by. Mind you, I had a lot of trauma when I was 31, that I’m probably still dealing with and maybe that’s the reason I keep thinking it’s still 2021? Idk
No. This life has seemed like an eternity.
Nope, that's just how time goes. Once you're out of the school/summer vacation schedule time blends together a lot more.
Maybe I'm the exception, but I feel like time is going Slow.
I have the opposite experience. Life, luckily, has been moving extremely slow for me for years.
How or why?
I have a lot of things going on. Every day is very long. I go to work early, work an average 14 hours and then come home and spend my nights with my kids. I cannot believe it’s only the beginning of July.
I’ll be 38 in October but luckily I guess for me late 90s-00s I was an odd duck with barely any friends lol. I do miss the shows. The newness of the internet etc but ugh the time itself. I’m glad I’m past that.
I hear you. I’m 40 now. I miss the 90’s and the 2000’s. People lived more in the moment and seemed to be less in their bubble, on average. Politics wasn’t quite as toxic. Music was still good. I didn’t have to worry about putting on weight or my LDL cholesterol level going up.
Teenage years felt like a snails pace, my 20s just seemd to zoom by, while I miss the laidbackness of the 90s I don't miss being an adolescent, I enjoy not being age restricted.
Time goes by faster the older you get, til one day we are outta time
You pass your death day every year and you don’t even know it
Time moves at the same speed on Earth. Your perception of time seems to speed up because each future month or year represents a smaller and smaller % of the time you have experienced as you age.
I have come across this quote that really resonates with me; "The world only goes 'round by misunderstanding" The quote, for me, touches upon a very unique observation regarding the passing of time...it appears that when there is misunderstanding the world seems to spin faster and we struggle to hang on so to speak, this spinning may make us waver or feel a naseua.. But then there are those moments of pure understanding.. where not only does time seem to slow down.. or even stop... It is as if for those brief moments time ceases to exist at all! This is all to say the observation of time is a completely subjective experience... Also shout out Zeno's Paradoxes.
No. I was busy traveling the world in my awesome Army career.
This year has gone by so fast
Yes ME. You and I are in the exact same boat except I was born in 1990 and often look back on my childhood and adolescence as the most beautiful times in my life. But I don’t know if it’s just nostalgia talking or if it was really as perfect as I remember it being
The planet keeps rotating lol edit: around the sun
It's not the rotating. It's the revolutions. I feel like the older I get the slower and slower the days go by, but the faster and faster the years go by. Doesn't make logical sense, but that's how it seems.
you’re right hahaha I forgot to include that very important distinction
The world ended in 2012 and the cosmic blast is accelerating time as we reach the end.
For me personally it’s been a wild 4 years. * Found out we were pregnant THE DAY government covid shutdowns were announced. * Pretty much all of 2020 being a dumpster fire. * Kiddo was in the hospital for three weeks after being born (is great now) * 2021 parenting joys * 2022 wife got pregnant again, unplanned. * 2022 was just busy with work and trying to raise a toddler with a pregnant wife. * 2023 had two dogs pass away, drama at work, bought a new home, sold previous home and everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong, all while navigating two children! * 2024 got off to a good start but holy fuck this election is going to give me a heart attack
My life is going slow AF because I’m constantly seeking new and novel experiences. That’s what helps wrinkle the brain so you don’t just discard the grind
It's because your brain has processed so many basic situations/functions so many times, it takes less time for you to process it now. Thus speeding up your perception of time.
Probably cuz I have kids now and work. That takes up all the time.
older millennial here (more Xennial). i have found that my mid-forties is teenage-esque. there is quite a bit of angst. change in your body, mind, outlook on life. only recently have i started to embrace that in a fun, YOLO kind of way. so my advice would be to think of of the 2020’s like your new, improved version of the 1990’s. it’s a do over. hell your back might hurt but at least you’ve got the benefit of wisdom this time around. all this to say: try not to think about the past so much and live for the moment.
We spend too much time working or staring at our phones
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQsqH48bkRs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQsqH48bkRs) I first saw this episode when I was 10 and I *thought* I understood what Edina was talking about. But oh God, do I understand now.
Same. I turn 38 in September. I have strong nostalgia for the late 90s early 00s as well. I’m grateful that we have such easy access to the music, movies and tv shows from that time, it helps keep the memories alive. Chuck Klosterman’s book The Nineties, and the Netflix documentary about Woodstock 99 are great and worth a read and a watch. They provide some good insights into the good and the bad of the 90s. It’s up to us to learn from the past and try to make the future the best we can. Hopefully we still have a lot of living left to do.
We get into a routine. Time passes quickly when you are busy- you focused on work and errands, day after day. It feels even faster if you have kids because all your attention is on them. Take the time to stop and enjoy glimmers of certain moments around you (being solo in nature and taking breaks from work for example). Get off social media and electronics. Time moves slower when you take part in that mindfulness. I wish I was 25 again and took that time to enjoy. It feels like I never get me-time anymore.
Someone said if they made a show like “that 70’s show” now, it would be “that 00’s show”. Because it was made 28 years after 1970. Made me feel old as hell when I read that comment.
10000%. I’m the same age and I’m completely starting over alone right now due to illness and some other heavy life circumstances. I lost a lot of people throughout the pandemic and since for those reasons so now I’m doing it all alone and it’s…rough to reconcile. At least you have success in your corner! That’s a huge leap in the right direction.
Wonder about it? I’ve been in an existential crisis about it for 5 years now. I swear I was 27 like 3 years ago… now I’m a 43 year old man? The hell? Also, 2025-2030 are the sorts of years old sci-fi movies used in the 80’s, so that’s weird.
i live in a country as an adult that i wasn’t born in or grew up in, so life feels pretty dense day to day. Almost surreal. It feels very rich sometimes, even to an overwhelming degree. maybe it going by so fast has to do with predictability and stable conditions for the brain and it not being tested or challenged enough to re-appraise your perception of time.
81 here and I wonder how time passed so fast all the time. I am nostalgic for the 90s as well, if only for the amount of hope we had back then. I miss that feeling. We don't have it anymore, everything after 9/11 has sucked.
GenX kindly says to STFU
I grew up in poverty, so my life really didn't start until after high school. It was such a dividing line that I could recall most things after that time with ease but couldn't remember hardly anything during my childhood. Didn't watch movies, go to concerts, or watch TV unless it was a local channel. I will say though, the world seemed more hopeful about the future before 9/11. As well as the overall quality of things as been diminishing especially since 2020
Read up about Simulacra theory by Baudrillard. Read up about videogame Iraq war (first televised war). Things in the 90s felt more real nowadays we are moving into a Simulacra reality.
It's referred to as time dilation. The perception of time speeds up as you have more years of past life experiences & memories to draw on. When you're 9 years old half of your life's memories span 4.5 years, of which you can actually only accurately remember back to maybe 3-4 of them, and not all of them, only cornerstone memories. Favorite color, stuffed animals, food, etc. By the time you're 20 you have half life memories going for 10 years, of which you can accurately recount major portions of it as long as you weren't traumatized in those periods. So on and so forth. The more years you live, the more memories you amass, but the brain cannot consider that span of time for the span it is without basically driving itself mad, so it condenses the span of memories down to almost immediate ramifications. This is time dilation.
The older I get, the faster time moves. It's terrifying. Even moment to moment, I feel like I have less hours in a day than I ever did before. I'm 37 and so far this has been the freakiest/worst thing about aging. I don't mind looking older and I can tolerate the joint pain. But for the first time, I really feel like I don't have enough time to do everything I want to, and I hate it.
Honestly no.. I have lived a ton of life. I have done so much and it feels like time stretches out behind me. I have grown and changed and been so many different things in my 36 years. I do get nostalgic about the 90s when I see images and videos and realized how much the world really has changed. I do sometimes miss the simplicity and innocence of childhood.
I once had a customer who said she was sitting with a woman in hospice who described it like this. Life is like a full toilet paper roll. The paper runs faster the further into the roll you go. Morbid? Maybe, but it has stuck in my mind. I was in my early 20s when I was told this, and it seems to be true. I love how calm my life is, but I also have this overwhelming want for adventure, knowing that my youth is gone. However, I'm not old yet.
You get 8760 hours in a year The average person can expect to live 683,280 hours.