My Sense Of Time

I have a skewed sense of time.

This is something that I have just realised – something which may or may not be an Aspie thing or it might just be my thing.

Or, hell, it might be an everyone thing. Who knows? I’m trying to work out which of my quirks are Aspie quirks, and which are things that everyone experiences… And which are things that nobody ever in the world but me experiences.

And the trouble with that is, quite simply, I only experience the things that I experience, so how can I know if they’re unusual or completely normal?

Anyway, on with my sense of time.

Now, I’m sure you all know the old adage “How time flies when you’re having fun.”

Well, yes, I have times where time flies when I’m doing something I enjoy, or working on an obsession. But I have also noticed, looking back, that there have been times I’ve done something I dreaded and time has ‘flown’. As well as times when I’ve done something I either enjoy or dislike, and time has slowed down almost to a standstill.

It is nothing, in my case, to do with either tedium or enjoyment. And it is seemingly random, whether time will go fast or slow.

When I’m driving, long distance and to a place I’ve driven multiple times, I have to actively ‘time’ myself, keeping track of how long it takes, because otherwise I’m startled (at the end of a drive filled with heavy traffic jams) when a drive that usually takes two hours and 30 minutes has taken five hours. Because my skewed sense of time tells me “you’re driving this way, you’ve been this way before, and it takes two and a half hours so this will take two and a half hours.”

Half an hour’s lunch break is more than sufficient – provided I don’t have to go anywhere. But 6 hours a day, five days a week isn’t enough time to do the housework… which all eventually gets done in two hours on Friday night before Hoppy gets there.

So it’s not just my sense of time, as in how I ‘see’ time as it is happening. But it also my perception/idea of time, as in, how long I think something will take to happen or be done.

 I start doing something at 3pm because I think it will take me four hours… and it’s done at 3:15pm. Then I have all this free time, but I’m scared to start something new because I think I won’t have enough time. Or, I think something will be easy or quick, but it takes longer than I thought and I’m still nowhere near finished… so over half the time I give up.

My skewed sense of time makes simple things seem epic, and I’m scared to do them. It makes epic things seem simple so I have many unfinished things on my C.V and on my to-do list.

I want to make a rainbow cake (I have a purpose, nobody gave me a birthday cake last week) (and a new purpose, it’s Hoppy’s grandad’s birthday this Friday… except I don’t know if I’ll be going up there) and making a cake is simple… I finish work at 3 every day, am home by 4 ish depending. But I don’t seem to have the time. It doesn’t help that {why, yes, I have forgotten how this sentence will end…}

I think that’s a good place to end my train of thought… with losing my (current) train of thought.

Does anyone else out there experience a weird sense of time? Either in how they perceive it as it happens, or in how they believe it will happen? I really would like to know!