My broken internal clock

The older I get the more I believe in life stages over age. For example, give me a 30 year old with a kid and a mortgage and I will relate to them more than a 42 year old single apartment dweller. When I look back at my life it is easily cut into stages: my childhood, college as a unique but short experience that blurs with my post-college Dell life, my years in Odessa, our years in our old house in Leander and then our years with Finn. But then there are the major world events that define my lived experience, like 9/11 and the COVID pandemic, and those are often benchmarks in which to frame my stages as well. In particular the latter event- COVID - seemed to break my internal clock in a way I never could have predicted beforehand. 

When I started this blog in 2018 it existed to be a journal of my early life experiences being a dad. I knew that one day I would appreciate being able to have these words to reminisce about Finn's early life, as I knew that my memory of the early parts of his life would begin to blur. Once I started writing here I found a form of therapy in capturing memories from the life stages before Finn, namely our life at Laurel Lane and in the end part of our time in Odessa. It helped me process Luna's aging and death better than I did with Xena, and it allowed me to put on paper a pre-child mindset that I have since lost access to. Then once Finn was born it did a great job of serving its original purpose as a baby blog, and helping me process how much he would change in his first half decade of existing. This benefit to my life has inspired me to keep writing on here long past the point where I thought I would find it useful, and I have tried to be consistent about coming and posting my thoughts every few months. 

But there was a year hole in this blog during what was a pivotal year for Finn (aka time that should have been recorded), all due to COVID. In a previous post I wrote about the negative effect the COVID pandemic had on me and my mental state, but its kinda jarring to look back through the date stamps on posts and see and exact year long pause right about when lockdown really changed our whole society. But even more jarring is internalizing what this event did to my sense of time in the years since. 

For some reason, almost anything since COVID seems "recent." I have long shaken the thoughts of death and sheltering that pre-occupied my 2020, but with a few exceptions the years of 2021, 2022 and 2023 all seemed kinda blurred together to the point where the pandemic does not feel like "four years ago." Even more striking is how any time before the pandemic feels like ancient history. I will find a new song I like from 2019, or come across some article I want to read from 2018, and it feels like it was more than ten years ago- in the "before time." To be fair 2018 is six years ago, but in 2018 I felt like 2012 was a sort of recent event. Now 2012 might as well feel like 2002, and 2018 feels like 2002 felt in 2018. 

Reading back that last paragraph I find its hard to articulate what my feelings are. Instead I have tried to focus on "why." Some of it could simply be an accidental alignment of life stage, as COVID hit right around my first year of being a dad which was always going to be a demarcation line for me. But that cannot be all of it, as Finn's first year of life feels like part of the distant past as well. Some of it could be that in 2024 we are still feeling the effects of COVID as a society, via inflation and the attitudes of people. Or even just our surroundings, Lindsey pointed out the other day how many businesses still have "social distancing" stickers on their floors like fossils of a previous age. Most of that way of life of has been moved on from- grocery story checkouts aren't still prisons of plexiglass and someone wearing a mask in public has gotten to be outside the norm again. But there are still plenty of examples left about, which makes the time that has passed not seem as significant. 

At the end of the day I am just left wondering if I will spend the rest of the decade feeling like its 2021, and when if ever my internal clock will catch up to present day. Probably when my life significantly changes and I move into a new life stage which is something currently on my horizon. For now I am just grateful I did write down so many thoughts here of my life before 2020, because there now exists a huge mental barrier preventing me from reaching back into those old mindsets easily.