Category: Life

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Wide Awake

4 am and I’m wide awake. Fuckin’ cortisol…

After laying in bed, tossing and turning for an hour and the entirety of Jazz At The Pawnshop 3 failing to lull me back to sleep, I finally decided to just get up. Apparently both pups also needed to go out, so it was apparently meant to be. I heard Sophie in the kitchen attacking her empty bowl, so I also fed her. (Raffi had already gone back to bed.)

At this point I think I’m up for the day. But one of the nice things about retirement is I have nothing on my schedule today,  so if I need a nap calls…

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This Has Inspired Me

I don’t know how far I’ll get with it, but I know it’s lit a fire somewhere inside that I need to address. I think of my collection of CD and MiniDisc players, the various items of stereo gear in boxes in closets—not to mention clothing I haven’t worn in years, and I realize that I’ve got to start purging.  I think of the embarrassment of knick-knacks on the top of shelves that I clean myself because I don’t want our monthly housekeeping service to have to deal with it. My desk drawers are a disaster, along with various other drawers scattered throughout the house, full of shit that hasn’t been touched in forever—not to mention the plastic storage tubs in closets that are full of things that if they were just thrown out nothing inside would be missed.

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It’s Not A Time Shift

Psychologists say time itself began to feel different after 2000. Then it shifted again after 2020. Not because the world suddenly moved faster, but because the human brain stopped recording life in the same way.

Before 2000, life had a natural rhythm.

Seasons felt unique. Years felt separate. Childhood felt long for a reason.

Your brain was truly present.

After 2000, something quietly changed. Not the clock. The brain.

Internet. Email. Smartphones. Endless scrolling.

Constant stimulation flatted our sense of memory.

Researchers from Stanford and UCLA discovered that when the brain is overloaded, it struggles to form deep memories, and fewer memories make time feel shorter.

Your brain silently concludes that nothing important happened.

So entire years begin to blur together.

Ping. Scroll. Switch. Refresh.

Every interruption breaks mental continuity. Your brain can no longer build long timelines. Days feel chaotic. Years feel missing.

The pandemic didn’t just disrupt routines. It reshaped how we experience time. Stress. Fear. Uncertainty. Isolation. Monotony. All at once.

Under constant stress, the prefrontal cortex stops planning. The hippocampus stops storing memories. The nervous system shifts into survival mode.  The result? Days blue, weeks disappear, and years merge into one.

People everywhere report the same feeling: 2020 feels like yesterday. Everything since then feels like a single long year. I feel years older than I should. You are not imagining it.

Time slows down when life is full of novelty: new places, new faces, new challenges. After 2020? Less travel, less change, less variation. No novelty means fewer memories. Fewer memories mean less sense of time.

Stress doesn’t just blue the past. It also compresses the future. Studies show stress makes people feel older, lose long-term vision, believe time itself is running out. The brain becomes trapped in the present moment.

Time feels faster when the rain is overwhelmed, stressed, under-stimulated, fragmented, and disconnected. Time itself never changed. Our ability to experience it did.

We now live in a world of information overload, low novelty, high stress, and constant distraction. The perfect formula for life to feel unreal.

That’s why the 2000s flew by. The 2010s faced away. And the 2020s feel like a blur.

Here is the hopeful truth: you can expand time again. The brain slows time when it experiences novelty, presence, deep focus, emotion, adventure, and meaning.

    • Psychologists suggest simple changes:
    • Do fewer things with deeper focus.
    • Turn off constant notifications.
    • Seek real and new experiences.
    • Change your surroundings.
    • Create clear memory moments.
    • Reduce ongoing stress.

An intentional life feels longer.

Time never actually sped up. The world didn’t suddenly distort. Our brains simply stopped fulling living. And to feel time gain, we must relearn how to truly live again.

[From an Instagram post I failed to properly document.]

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Home

Came home yesterday around noon. After wrapping myself enough so that certain areas that needed to stay dry stayed dry, I grabbed a quick shower and then  collapsed into bed where I slept for several hours,

Last night definitely required some Ella, and will ya look at what was delivered in my absence last week!

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A Serious Question

Something is off. Something is in the air. Something just ain’t right.

I’ve asked several people (both online and in person) if life seems more than just a bit off lately. I don’t specially mean the dystopian worldwide political hellscape that’s permeating every aspect of our lives, but just life in general. I look around and think, “This isn’t the way this is supposed to be. It’s all wrong.” It’s like an old episode of The Twilight Zone where the protagonist is the only one who knows something ‘s wrong, or in more contemporary terms, it feels like The Matrix is continually glitching. Frankly at this point I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the proverbial flying saucer appears and lands on the White House lawn. I mean it’s about the only thing that hasn’t happened.

But at the same time, I don’t have an overreaching feeling of dread for the future (unless I spend too much time doomscrolling), but rather—and even when I do go doomscrolling—a feeling that everything’s still going to be all right. And it’s not years away…it’s right around the corner. Something is going to happen to put an end to this madness and wake us from this horrible nightmare.

Listen…Felon45 does not have nearly the power or influence he and his handlers would have us believe. Now that he’s tanked the economy he’s losing his own followers. Look at how many times he’s been swatted down by the courts since he took office. And despite his wet dream of disbanding the courts or upending Habeas Corpus, it’s not going to happen. He’s a sad, weak, dementia-ridden old man who’s obviously suffered at least one stroke, increasingly can’t get his words out, and still somehow dreams of being the next Hitler—but is in actuality just a couple Big Macs away from ridding the planet of his presence completely. And in any case he is not the source of this overall—”offness” I’m feeling. He is merely a symptom.

But what about you guys? What are you sensing?

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2024 In Pictures: My Loves, My Observations, My Obsessions…And A Few Selfies

About a week before the New Year I was going to post a “Year in Pictures” thingie, but after I selected the images I realized that so many of them were of Sammy and I just…couldn’t. His passing was still too fresh. I mentioned this to Ben and he said I should create the post for precisely that reason because Sammy was such a big part our lives.

Well, it’s been a couple weeks since I gathered the photos together and after thinking it over, I think it’s time.























































“Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.” ~ Richard Bach, from The Messiah’s Handbook

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Staycation Begins!

For the next 9 days I don’t even have to think about work! And except for next Friday—when I have a cortisone injection scheduled for a trigger finger—I have nothing on my schedule!

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A Handy Guide

I’ll admit I’m an abject failure at keeping a clean house. I wasn’t always this way. I remember sending pictures of a new apartment I’d moved into in the early 2000s to a friend and he replied, “You moved into a model home?”

But lately…if I just ignore it, it will all go away, right?

I also never understood why everything in my dad’s place would be absolutely covered with dust. “I start cleaning and just run out of energy,” he’d say. I’m now at the age that he was when I started noticing his once-pristine environment becoming increasingly unkempt—and now I understand why.

It also doesn’t help to have that extensive collection of tchotchkes that make dusting an absolute nightmare…

It’s gotten to the point where Ben and I have discussed having someone come in once a  week toi give the place a quick once-over (dusting, vacuuming, mopping the floors), or at the least once-a-month deep clean (all the above plus doing the bathroom).