I was talking with my mom the other day about the strange way time behaves.
How some decades felt roomy. Expansive. Almost indulgent in their length. How it felt like we lived at the Farm on Koksilah Road F-O-R-E-V-E-R.
And how others, entire chapters of life, seemed to disappear while we were still standing inside them.
Neuroscience has an explanation for this, which I find both comforting and mildly annoying.
Time, it turns out, doesn't actually speed up or slow down.
Our experience of time does.
And the biggest variable isn't age. It's novelty.
· · ·
When we do new things, visit unfamiliar places, learn new skills, disrupt routines, our brains lay down denser memories. More landmarks. More texture. Looking back, that period feels longer, fuller, more there.
Which explains why a three-week adventure trip can feel epic, while the last three weeks barely register.
And why I remember almost nothing about the 18 months when we didn't leave the house during COVID. Same walls. Same days. Same walks. Same fear, looping.
The brain, apparently, gets bored with repetition and stops taking notes.
That realization landed a little harder than I expected.
· · ·
Because I've been thinking a lot lately about the next 40 years.
I'm doing the responsible part. Listening to Peter Attia. Lifting weights. Prioritizing protein. Thinking about bone density and VO₂ max and all the unglamorous but essential things required if I want to move through the world with strength and independence for decades to come.
But physical longevity is only part of it.
What I really want is experiential longevity.
I don't just want to live longer. I want the years to feel wide.
I want future decades to have the same sense of substance and memory as the earlier ones.
I don't want time to quietly compress into a blur of routines and sensible choices and well-managed days that all look suspiciously alike.
· · ·
Which raises an uncomfortable but useful question:
If novelty is what slows time, where has it quietly drained out of adult life?
We talk a lot about comfort as a goal. Stability. Optimization. Getting things "dialed in." Providing safety for our children.
But comfort, left unchecked, can become sameness.
And sameness, neurologically speaking, is a time accelerator.
This doesn't mean chaos. Or constant reinvention. Or booking flights for the sake of posting proof.
Most novelty is small. Subtle. Private.
It's the new walking route. The unfamiliar genre. The conversation you don't usually have. The class you take, knowing you'll be bad at it. The habit you disrupt on purpose, not because it's broken, but because it's invisible.
Novelty asks us to pay attention again.
And attention, it turns out, is how we mark time.
· · ·
So alongside the protein intake and the strength training and all the things designed to keep the body capable, I'm quietly designing for novelty. Or at least trying, some days.
Not to chase excitement. But to slow the years down.
Because I'd like to arrive at 95 with strong bones, yes, but also with a long, detailed memory.
A life that didn't rush past me while I was busy being efficient.
~ Danielle
The Midlife Syllabus
Lesson #11
If you want time to slow down, introduce something unfamiliar and pay attention to it.
Beauty, Grace & Daily Artistry
A small, imperfect pleasure:
Like many people this time of year, my back garden is a mess.
When I'm sitting at my desk (which I do a lot), I look straight out at it. From May to October, this is one of life's great perks. Green. Calm. Reassuring. Proof that I've made at least one good decision.
From November to March, it's just… deferred maintenance.
Bare branches. Mud. Things that need cutting back, replanting, tidying, rethinking. Jobs that can't be done because it's dark by four, raining sideways, and somehow also dark again. Mostly it's just me, staring out the window, mentally compiling very optimistic to-do lists for March and April.
This has been the setup for seven years. Same desk. Same view. Same mild, low-grade irritation masquerading as realism.
This week, in a small but surprisingly decisive act of agency, I moved my work station into the living room.
That's it. No renovation. No big declaration. Just picked up my laptop and changed rooms.
I don't want to overstate things, but it has genuinely changed everything. The work feels lighter. My shoulders dropped. I stopped mentally negotiating with the weather and the calendar. I wasn't being quietly nagged by a future version of myself holding pruning shears.
Same work. Same house. Different angle.
It turns out sometimes the pleasure isn't fixing the thing you're looking at. It's choosing not to look at it for a while.
A reminder I apparently needed: you're allowed to move. Even when the problem stays put.
What I'm Reading, Watching, or Listening to
Listening
Blue Rodeo, Five Days in July.
This time of year has me feeling nostalgic for friends and times that have passed. This was the soundtrack of our 20s. And for 11 songs and 59 minutes and 17 seconds, I'm there again on the deck at the Hollywood Court on Broadway.
This Week on the Blog
You know that feeling when you've been walking for ages, thinking you still have miles to go, and then someone tells you, you're almost there?
It's disorienting. Relief and regret all tangled together. You think, Oh. I didn't realize. You also think, Why didn't anyone tell me sooner?
That's the question I've been turning over lately. About life. About love. About work. About all of it, really.