the passage of time

A member of my team was in a serious accident at some point during the summer. He spent a few weeks in a coma, and then was on leave for what seemed a really long time. When he finally came back to the office, this is how our first exchange went:

me: Hey man, how are you? It's been a really long time...like 5-6 months, right?

him: No, it's only been three months.

One of my colleagues in China is currently on maternity leave. In China, you usually get four months of maternity leave (something the Chinese definitely have right, if you ask me). I hadn't seen her on IM for a while, so when I saw her online a few weeks ago, I figured the four months must have passed and she was back in the office. Nope. It turned out that only two and a half months had passed.

I've been having this problem all year, and it feels like it's getting worse. Things that happened before July seem like an eternity away. Details and memories are few, and it's only my compulsive need to save every email that saves me from getting completely lost sometimes.

There have been other times in my life where I've multitasked a lot, and when I look back, the problem is the same as the problem I'm having this year: I can't remember anything. My last two years at BYU, when I worked and went to school full-time, seem like a complete blur. I can only remember the name of one classmate from those two years, but I can remember tons of people from my first two years, despite the fact that those two years were completed three years before the last two. It feels like it should be the other way around.

Where I once prided myself on my ability to multitask to the extreme, I'm starting to worry that I'm compressing too many things into too little time. I'm having trouble remembering things, and there's little time to really think things over or, if necessary, to enjoy them to their fullest. I'm starting to feel how old people must feel--you know, they can remember what they ate for dinner during the Great Depression but can't remember what happened five minutes ago.

This makes me wonder how I will view the freedom I will have come mid-December. No more school. Only a job. One job. Will I be happy? Will I be bored? Will I go crazy? How will I fill the time? These are important questions. Sort of. Not really. But you get the idea.