Recapturing Time

New York's 30 Rock Plaza - fleeting memory from 2010

This happens every year, so it shouldn’t be a surprise. But it is. Every year.

It starts as we roll up to the night of Halloween – that glorious fall adventure of collecting scads of candy on the doorsteps of friendly neighbors. And just as the chocolate high kicks in, the clocks change and we fall back by an hour.

We saw Interstellar last weekend, and (no spoiler intended…) found its time shifting sequences eerily familiar after hopping nine time zones plus daylight savings time all in one week. 

I still don’t fully understand why an hour of daylight at the beginning of the day is worth things going dark by four in the afternoon.  But it turns out that hour shift makes all the difference in what comes next. It whacks the time-space continuum for most of us, taking days to adjust to the time distortion.

Then right after the Fall Back weekend, we Americans immediately enter The Holiday Season when our consumer-based economy hits the gas pedal. Images of lavish food laden tables, toy-delighted children, glitzy glamorous champagne events, and luxury trinkets become the wallpaper of November and December inspiring various levels of manic decorating and cooking efforts by yours truly.

And somehow, in the midst of this over-the-top season of entertaining, giving and receiving, time speeds up until we arrive at the end of the year in a heap of exhaustion with barely the energy for a marathon of Bing Crosby. Certainly we have no memory of the last few months of the year – ever. It’s as if an entire lifetime of Novembers and Decembers have just evaporated.

Oh sure, I retain images of snow drifts from 20-some years of living in Minnesota, and turkey-laden tables at Grandpa’s farm, but recent memories? Mostly foggy images.

This year, I’m on a quest to recapture a bit of time. Take my time. Spend some time – all of it with close friends and family so that 2014 doesn’t slalom its way out and into 2015 without a pause for reflection. Or the many pauses that will be needed to assess where we are and where we’re going in this grand adventure called "life".

If there’s one upside to exceedingly early - and therefore long - nights, it’s the urging it provides to kick back with friends and a glass of wine for deep talks. And that’s my goal for this year’s end – many long, meaningful discussions with friends and family to capture touch points for this capstone year of writing the plot for my next chapter.

That’s my goal – how do you plan to spend the end of this year at your place?