adulthood

Spit Out and Churned Out By The Relentless March Of Time, I Keep Trying To Fight Back

~ ChanAtkins ~ 3 Comments

How focusing on moments made Monday mornings a little sweeter..

(Originally posted on Medium)

Image by Bruno from Pixabay

I think our awareness of time really starts when we enter education. I remember sitting in a classroom and staring at the clock willing it to move. When finally it was home time I’d feel elated, but before I knew it, my mother would be saying it was time for bed. And then there was the Sunday night dread… School again tomorrow! Really, already?

Friday night was wonderful. Saturday was great but slightly marred by the knowing that Sunday quickly followed and Sunday kind of sucked because it was the day before Monday. Me and my son were talking about this the other day. He is ten and often expresses sentiments that echo my own relationship with time.

For instance, he often claims that the weekend went too fast, and he is starting to notice that in general, time moves too quickly. He said this about the summer holiday, for example. ‘Today went really quick, this week is over already? It’s nearly time to go back to school!’ His panic echoed my own. It’s not fair, we both wanted to say — slow it all down, please!

I often wish time as we know it had not been invented. We are slaves to the clock and the passing of time whether we like it or not. It’s like a big doom-filled timer hanging over us – reminding you that you are always one step closer to death. Your time is always running out. You are always fighting against time. You always wish you had more of it.

Lack of time causes much stress and resentment. As a writer I never feel I have enough time to write. I always grab what I can and make the most of it but would I like endless time to write? Yes, of course! But life and human made constraints get in the way.

We have invented a world that counts us down in seconds, minutes and hours. We cannot look away. We are glued to it.

As much as I want to ignore time and not be ruled by it I cannot. I have to set an alarm to make sure we get up in time to be ready for the school run. I have to keep an eye on the time when I walk my dogs so that I am back on the laptop in time for Zoom calls. I have to watch the time to know when to pick my son up, when to cook dinner, when it’s time for bed.

Time, time, time. It owns us.

We all want to slow it down, but why? Because of death and not knowing for sure what comes after that. We worry, what if this is the one and only life I get? I’ve got to live it, fill it, appreciate it, make the most of it, but what if I’m not? It panics us. We want to slow it down because ultimately we are not okay with dying.

I resent it and I’m constantly looking for ways to change it only to realise that it’s impossible. Or is it?

Is there a way to slow it down? I’m always wondering this. I have an urge to try an experiment. I want to exist in a timeless weekend. I want to turn off all devices and make sure I cannot check the time at all, not once. I want to eat only when I am hungry and move when I feel restless and write when I feel creative and rest when I am tired. I want to do it and see if it feels faster or slower as I have a sneaking suspicion that watching the clock all the time is one of the things that makes it go faster.

Perhaps loving and enjoying life makes it feel faster. We all know that time slows down when we are bored or unhappy. Those afternoons sat at school watching the clock for the home time bell used to go on forever…

And why is it that as we grow older, time goes even faster? I sometimes feel I exist on a hamster wheel that just keeps me spinning around forever. I get churned out every Monday morning to the start of a new week, then suddenly it’s the end of the day, then suddenly it’s morning again, then suddenly it’s the end of the week.

It’s what everyone says all the time. Doesn’t it go fast? How is it nearly Christmas again? Didn’t the summer fly by?

Is there anything we can do to slow time down or make friends with it?

I think so. And being a writer really helps…

Let’s take Monday morning. No one wants it. No one loves it. It’s a very sad and unloved day of the week, but is it really so bad? Sometimes we have to embrace the unwanted and the unloved and look at it in a different way.

I am trying hard to make friends with Monday. I am trying to give it some love, after all, is Friday really the great fun pal it makes itself out to be? I think not when it all too suddenly spits you into Saturday with Sunday on the horizon!

This Monday morning I woke up in a good mood. Despite recent ups and downs, I surprised myself by waking up with a smile. The night before I tucked myself into my own dream world as usual and tried something new. I talked to myself in my head (I know I sound crazy…) about the niceness of tomorrow. I walked my way through the little bits of Monday that would be nice.

It started with my breakfast of oats with a swirl of chocolate spread mixed in. I smiled thinking about it. I know I am very easily pleased but I was looking forward to it. Other nice things were my time on my own before everyone wakes up and playing this little town building game I have on my iPad before reading a bit of news. The next niceness was waking my son up because one of our dogs always has to be involved and always makes it funny in some way. The next niceness was remembering that we bought the Blur Live At Wembley CD yesterday and me and my music mad son could enjoy listening to more of it on the drive to school.

I focused on these nice things more as they came up because I had tucked myself into sleep thinking about them. Then I started to notice more of them. It was Monday morning all right and there was something dark and menacing about it. Dark skies promised more rain and it felt like the sun had barely risen. The landscape looked haunted and beautiful. I smiled. There is beauty in darkness. There is beauty in a dark Monday morning.

I’m not sure if it slowed time down but it made me feel less of a slave to it and I carried it on for the rest of Monday. The niceness of my lovely Zoom group children, the niceness of eating the leftover focaccia bread we bought yesterday, the niceness of another dog walk under moody skies, the niceness of writing ideas filling my head, and eventually us all gathering back at home to eat dinner and talk about our days before another day ends.

And I feel lucky… I am alive. I had another Monday. I woke up. I lived and breathed and thought and felt and dreamed and noticed and experienced…. Yes time passed but that was because I lived. And one day I will be close to dying and I’ll look back and think well, that went fast but I did my best with it, I saw it for what it was and I tried to soak up and experience every moment, even the bad ones, and I didn’t wish it away and I paused as often as I could to think how amazing it was to have had a life.

Wow, if you think about it, it really is a beautiful thing to be alive…

As for now, I’ll end the day with the ultimate reward, writing. Then in bed once more, I’ll talk to myself about my stories, replay and plan scenes, listen to the characters talk and figure out plot holes and then I’ll think ahead about the niceness of Tuesdays…

In conclusion, I’ll let you know if I ever do my timeless experiment but I do wonder if living without time, having endless time would actually be some kind of hell?

The Joy Of Staying Childish

~ ChanAtkins ~ 9 Comments

Confession: I never feel like I’m a proper adult.

I’m sure I’m not the only one. In fact, I know I’m not because this is a regular topic of conversation between me and my husband. We constantly look around at other adults and discern that we are not like them. They are indeed proper adults and we certainly are not.

I’m not sure we want to be. No, probably not.

I was never the kid who wanted to grow up in a hurry and I don’t think my husband was either. I think if he could have stayed a lanky kid playing football until it was too dark to see, he would have. And if I could have stayed a bookish kid reading and writing in her bedroom, I would. Oh that’s still me!

I don’t understand people who want to be adults. I don’t understand people who are adults. I find them really hard to talk to. Most adults I come across are really, really into small talk. Small talk about cars, mortgages, interest rates, remodelling their houses, shit like that. Shit I don’t give a shit about. I never know what to say in reply. I usually have to try and not laugh.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay (I love this photo. I feel like this will be us in the future)

I’m a giggler. And its getting worse. The older I get the more I want to giggle at everything. The slightest thing can set me off and my family know exactly how to get me going and make me choke on my tea. I’m not sure giggling with other adults happens much though? They all seem so serious. Or cheerful, about mortgages and new cars. I don’t get it.

Me and my husband just pretend at being adults. We both have jobs, though mine is one where I get to be silly with kids who love writing as much as me! My husband makes his job more fun by deliberately confusing customers or spouting random political opinions at them in a cheery manner.

As I type this I am laughing at a group chat we have on the go. I’ve got tears running down my face and my eyes sting. They don’t care though – they just make me laugh more. Sometimes I think they’re trying to kill me. My husband and I drove back from Wales yesterday after dropping our eldest back at University. I think we laughed the whole way back. At ourselves, at other people, at everything.

We look at other adults, other parents and then we look at each other, eyebrows raised.

We don’t mean to be mean, but we just don’t understand them, we just can’t gel with them. We both try hard not to get snared by anyone on the school run. Our tactics are similar. Stay in the car until the last possible minute, rush in, grab child, make no eye contact, rush back to car, phew! We don’t have a lot but we look at other people and feel glad we are not them.

Our response to life is to take the piss out of it. Our reaction to this dying world is to poke fun and laugh until we cry. No one will ever listen to us anyway, even though we know we are right about everything.

When I see a hill, I want to roll down it. When I see a tree, I want to climb it. When I see rocks, I want to jump from one to the next. I’m glad these silly childish urges have never faded. I hope they never do.

How to adult?

No clue.

It’s just not in our genes.

But my question to you today, is this. Do you feel like an adult? Do you ‘adult’ well? Does society accept and recognise you as a fully functioning adult person? Or are you like us? Do you still feel the same inside as you always did? Do you look in the mirror and find it hard to reconcile your ageing face with the childish nature inside of you?

I hope so. It’s much more fun this way.

I see you, single white eyebrow hair!

~ ChanAtkins ~ 10 Comments

Yes, I see you. There’s no hiding from me. Not that you were trying to hide that much anyway. I mean, how could I not notice you? One bright white hair sticking up in the middle of all the black ones? You weren’t exactly trying to be anonymous, were you? No, in fact, I rather feel your flamboyant combination of stark white colour and blatant lack of respect for the order hairs lay in, was more of a giant fuck you, to be honest!

But that’s okay. I can take it! I’m a big girl. And you know that already don’t you? And anyway, I hate to piss on your party parade, little white eyebrow hair, but you were beaten to it by a couple of head hair a few years ago! So there! And there have been a few more since then, believe me. So you weren’t such a shock, I’m sorry to say. You looked sort of weird and out of place though, so I plucked you out and examined you, and I expect you’ll be glad to hear your brief existence as part of my body did encourage me to stand and consider the passing of my time.

But the white hairs on my head was a bigger deal. Because those little bastards crept up on me. They took me by surprise, unlike you. Those hairs got me in a right little spin. They had me thinking about age and death for weeks! But you, I’m not so sure. I feel like I will just shrug you off. You see, back then, I was a few years into my thirties. And let me tell you, shocking white eyebrow hair, your early thirties are a time of massive denial and self-delusion.

You’ve just come out of your twenties and you can’t quite believe you’ve actually crossed the threshold into your thirties. It doesn’t seem real. Or fair. Twenties sounds so nice, doesn’t it? No one really wants to be a teenager forever, not with all the angst and insecurity, but your twenties are fantastic. You’re still young. You look young! You feel young. Old age feels a million years away; something that can never touch you. Then you roll on into your third decade, and it feels like quite a beating if I’m honest.  Quite a shock to the system.

I remember when I was heading out of my twenties. Being thirtysomething distressed and confused me. As that big 3-0 approached, I started looking around at other women of that age. How was I supposed to dress? How should I act? I felt like I had to leave my old scruffy, student style clothes behind me and try to appear a bit more polished. I genuinely thought this!

Early thirties is a strange time. You tell yourself you are still young, and of course, you still feel exactly the same. We never really change much on the inside. But you are suddenly confronted with one hard, cold fact. Entering your third decade is the beginning of the end of being young. Of course, it doesn’t happen overnight. You don’t suddenly wake up with crows feet and saggy arms, thank God. You don’t suddenly turn grey or develop arthritis. But it’s the start…or the end.

And towards the end of your thirties? There is no denying it. You’re a woman now, not a girl. You’re approaching middle-age, something you never, ever, ever thought would happen to you. You see, we witness the changes of the seasons. We watch leaves turn yellow and brown. We see them twist and twirl in the air as they fall to the ground. We kick through them and watch them turn to mulch. We see their decay but not our own. The new buds start the process again. Another season. Another Spring. Followed by another Summer, and Autumn, and so on.

Realising the world sees you as an adult, is weird. I still don’t feel like one. I always think people are older than me and feel genuinely shocked when I find out they are my age. I mean, they’re old…I’m not? 

doneadulting26

Those first white hairs were amusing to me. I pulled them out and looked them over. I was pleased by them, oddly. I liked that they were bright white, not grey. And I feel the same way about you, white eyebrow hair. So funny how things go full circle! I was so blonde when I was a toddler, my hair was almost white. To think one day I will have white hair and white eyebrows and eyelashes is really sort of exciting. I can just about see myself if I stare hard enough.

When I stop to think about it, and yes, okay, I admit the appearance of white hairs like yourself, does inevitably cause me to ponder…I really think I am okay with getting older.

There’s something I always think about and that’s how lucky I am to be here in the first place. You know, out of all those eggs and all those sperms, and all those opportunities for life to exist or not, I made it through. I saw a video this week where a guy was saying you have more chance of winning the lottery 10 times than you do of getting a life in the first place. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I agree with the sentiment. It’s mind-boggling if you think about it.

Getting older, spotting wrinkles and white hairs, it does make you feel a little sad, a little bit nostalgic. Of course, I stare at my face in the mirror and try to see the younger me. I hear songs that take me back, I experience memories out of the blue, ones I had forgotten. I think, how nice it would be to go back to that time. To do that again. But I would never really want to go back. To go back would be to lose who I am now. The years that have passed have shaped and moulded me into who I am now, someone I mostly quite like!

I think the whole fucking thing is amazing. This life. Getting up every morning and placing your feet down on the floor. Feeling the rain on your face. Facing the dark. Watching the shadows. Catching the light. Feeling the endless earthy beat of the world beneath your feet. Knowing love. Holding tight. Inhaling embraces. Star gazing. Paddling. Holding hands. It’s beautiful and amazing that we have the gift to look back, to remember and feel the emotions of the past. And it’s exciting and enthralling that we have the vision to look forward, to dream and imagine and hope. And it’s breathtaking when you think about it, that we have this same, one moment that we live in perpetually. Just us. Inside our skull. Looking out. What do you see?

For me, life is full of small, perfect moments. Of bare feet on warm concrete. Sitting on the doorstep with a hot cup of coffee. Watching birds fly in and out of the hedgerow. Finger nails filled with dirt. The sun setting and rising. Listening to the rain at night. Getting lost in a good book. Falling asleep beside your child. Smelling their hair. Knowing that nothing lasts forever, least of all you. But you can wake and walk and sleep and dream and live and love, day after beautiful day, until it ends.

So, you don’t scare me little white eyebrow hair. You don’t worry me. In fact, you make me smile. There will be more of you along, I know. One day I will give up plucking you out and I will let the white takeover. And that will be okay.

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