There was a period in my life where it felt like I had nearly infinite time. Nearly every task could get done now or in a little bit, and it didn't really matter exactly when. I had time to go to the gym for a couple hours, walk to the farmer's market and back (minimum 3 hours), do laundry, watch some funny videos, cook dinner, go for a little walk, do some reading, and still make it out for drinks with some friends. This I could, and often did, accomplish in one Saturday.
I can't do that anymore, and I don't really understand why.
I still wake up around the same time, I still go to sleep around the same time, I still eat about the same stuff, I sometimes work from home so don't even have a commute anymore. So where did all the time go?
Part of it, I'm sure, is about getting older. I have a lower tolerance for feeling tired or uncomfortable, so I'll take a little more time in the morning to get a good stretch before the day starts. It's only natural that you learn to slow down and enjoy the moments a bit more. I've got some of the telltale signs of being older, like grunting and having a more sensitive stomach that I need to plan around a little bit more. But even accounting for that, it often feels like I'm just out of time, every time.
I now have a car, could that be it? The car is the American symbol of freedom, yet I find it to be more of a chain at times. It encourages me to go further with less purpose, heading out to the cheaper or nicer store instead of getting groceries on the corner. We can now drive 30-45 minutes and be in the forest or on the coast instead of taking a city walk, and that can quickly eat most of a day if I'm not careful. But the difference is that I used to feel liberated by taking an evening trip to Mount Tamalpais and stopping by a brewery on the way home, now I feel guilty about taking the time away from other things I could be doing.
Maybe it's because I'm a homeowner (well, condo-owner)? I have projects and responsibilities that I didn't have to think about before. The laundry machines are now mine, and if they fail that's my problem. Cleaning is now important in a way that it wasn't before. I recently discovered a wool moth infestation, that's now my problem to solve and it's taken a bunch of my mental bandwidth.
Also, it's now a space that's mine, and I feel bad not staying and enjoying it. The couch and table can now be well thought out, since we plan on staying here for a while. Finding the right furniture at a reasonable price takes time, where previously we would just hop on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace and find the thing that was good enough.
But is that really where all the time went?
Maybe it's the technology. We're expected to be more connected than ever before. When I first got a smart phone, there was no expectation of immediate response to a phone call or text message. You were in class or eating lunch or just without your phone. Now the expectation is that we are all available, all the time. Not responding to a text message can get a passive-aggressive "hello?" followup in under 5 minutes. My work expects me to have Slack notifications enabled, and email notifications enabled, and to participate in an on call rotation, and just generally be available at almost all times of day. Hell, I've got some work running in the background while I write this.
My career in software started in a world where I could just sit down and build. Now I need to plan, and organize, and do compliance paperwork, and compliance training, and insider trader training, and AI safety training, and on and on. The work itself is no longer spent primarily building. That's specific to the tech industry, sure, but it also means that when I crave the feeling of building products, I have to reach into extra hours in the day because I can't always get to that kind of work during the official workday. What used to be late night hacking is now late night normal work, and the passion decreases the more non-hacking I get to do.
So, where did the time all go? Somewhere in all of these is the truth. The work changed and pushed more and more into my previous free time, my life changed and pushed me more and more into a homebody, and my body aged just enough to not push through some of the tiredness and started seeking comfort. It all adds up to: the time is gone. Now how can I reclaim it?