Our Time Seems to Be on a very Fast Train...

Oddly enough I just had this same conversation with my husband yesterday It will be Monday, and before I blink my eyes it is Friday, and I am trying to remember what I even accomplished. Even in a day's time, I feel as if the hours went by, and I feel as if I got nothing worth while done. When I tried to recall what all I did this week, I had a difficult time doing so. My Mom called yesterday just before we left for Dallas to get my pain pump refilled. She was kind of being a bit tacky to me, because she claimed she had not "heard from me in so long". Well, I spoke with her I know on Monday, and I believe Tuesday Also. I was busy (although I am trying to recall what I was doing) thus I did not go by to see her. So, she lays a guilt trip on me like I have not been by for ages... when I was there on Sunday, then spoke with her twice earlier in the week. Yet, when my husband and I got to thinking about it, I had been very busy. I had ran errands twice this week, and was out and about part of those days. I also did several "projects" or started them around the house, was trying to find a new pattern for another quilt, did some writing online, did all of the usual picking and straightening up, was on the phone several times with doctors, pharmacies, etc. about prescriptions, and just everything else that goes on in a days time... feeding the dogs and taking care of them, I cooked dinner several nights this past week, made a cherry cobbler, then made a banana coffee cake also. So, I had been busy all week long, but to me if felt as if the week was gone, and I got nothing done that I really wanted to get done again. I was talking also about how I cannot remember anything without notes. Everything I do requires a note so I remember to do it. Even taking my certain medications, I must make me a note and leave it so I will remember it as I go through my days. Another thing, that kind of goes along with this, is that I feel I have lost some of my ability to spell words correctly and so forth. As much as I write, read, am online etc. you would think the skills of spellings, using the correct grammar and so forth should be easy, but it is not. I find myself not able to spell some simple word, and it scares me that I have that kind of problem. Plus, I realize age does play a certain part in this... we tend to be slower at things as we age, we tend to not be as coordinated as we were a few years ago, thus we must slow down a little to avoid a fall, or doing something that might hurt us. So, some of what we go through is no different than others without the problem, but age is beginning to affect many things in my life and the way I do them. I also find that I "budget" my time now frequently. For instance, I will make a mental note of about how long it will take me to shower and dress, depending on if I do or do not do makeup etc. Then how much time will it take me to mix up that cake, get it in the oven, and as it bakes during that time, what can I do that is useful? Like ride my exercise bike, or do my walking etc.  Time since I turned about 48 or so began to just fly time. Around the time we arrived in Texas I started noticing that the hours, days, weeks, months and then years just are flying by. I went from arriving in TX in what feels like a very short time not long ago and having one new born grandson, to now him being in the 1st grade, the 2nd one born and almost old enough for kindergarten, and the grand daughter going from being a child to a teenager! It seems totally impossible my Dad has been gone now for 8 years, and we have been together over 10 and married 8. It feels like we just got to TX. Then I look around at the house, all we have done to it, all that has happened with my health, all of the surgeries, the illnesses, all of the doctors and tests.... and I wonder how we have endured it all. I am frightened that I will turn around once again and be my Mom's age, and wondering where my life went to (I already do that anyway) and what did I even accomplish?

We never quite realize just how quickly time passes us by, until we stand still long enough, take a deep breath, and truly give thought to all of the past years. How our lives have changed, how kids have grown up and have families of their own, how our parents have became "elderly" and don't have the same energy they had just a few years back. We see ourselves having to help them, rather than them take care of us. How life itself has changed, from technology.. we did not have microwaves, cell phones, computers, and many, many other "gadgets" when we were in high school. It seems as if that was only a few years ago. But, when you stop and really give thought to SO many ways our world has changed, it is mind blowing! As I just said, just in technology. Think about a camera. There was not a
"digital camera". There was film you had to have processed. There certainly was not a "flat screen" TV, or one as large as we have them now. Medical things such as microscopic surgeries, they had to open you up and you spent days in the hospital, now you go home after many procedures within a few hours. What about fast food? McDonalds, Wendys, KFC, TAco Bell, none of those existed. We had Dairy Queen and Dairy Mart... that was our "fast food". Cars ran 60 to 70 miles an hour, if that fast. There were no CD players, DVD players, video games, rice cookers, bread makers, everything was done, by hand the old fashioned way. And just a few years before we arrived for the most part, there were only black and white TV's and photos, no such thing as colored in those things, radios ran with "tubes" in them, we had no idea about "boards" in things such as that. You had a phone, that would cost a small fortune to call overseas, and it was "attached" to your home, and you certainly could not walk around the house or yard and talk on it. A key opened your car, not some remote. Now hell, a remote starts it, turns on everything, and you get in and it almost drives itself. Your "foot" was your cruise control. You had a transistor radio, no I-pod, I-pad, you read a physical book, not one off of a "cloud" computing system. Did not even know what that was. IF you needed to research something there was no internet. You looked it up in the encyclopedia.  Kids for the most part, walked or rode the bus to school, we did not get cars at the age of 15, unless we came from a very well to do family, or needed a hard ship license to work. Kids did work after school. Or we settled for a small allowance, because we had chores at home to do. Toys, wow, I can't even think about just how many changes there are there. From babies having "computers" now to nothing being left to the imagination, it is insane. Times have changed so rapidly... and there are many things that even my Grand kids will not know anything about. It is crazy....

I will say there are MANY things that have changed for the good. In medicine, leaps and bounds of research are saving many lives now. OUr technology has given us many great things added into our world. But, along with the good, is the bad. We are taking jobs away from humans, because machines can do them. We are polluting our air, water, land.... we can't even make enough food to feed everyone, due to more people living so much longer, plus we are taking up what we need for crops with concrete and steel so we have places for people to live. Our world now is a fast paced, ever changing chaotic place at times... we have more people that are insane and harming others... we are poisoning our own water and food with chemical agents... we are starving some in countries, while others are too fat from gorging themselves with fast food, and an unhealthy lifestyle. So, with the good, comes the bad part of it all also.

I have to wonder in another 50 years, what things will be like, or if we will even exist? Just things to ponder....