Morpheus: “Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
Neo: “What is the Time Dilation Vortex?”
When I was growing up, time seemed to move extremely slow. I remember asking my dad about this phenomenon on many occasions and I will always remember his answer: When you’re 8, a year is a much larger portion of your life than when you’re 30. This settled things in my mind and is generally what I believed as I grew up. However, an interesting thing happened. Every few years, I felt as though my brain experienced a sort of rapid worldview expansion in the matter of a few seconds. Each time, it was like several of the pieces in the jigsaw puzzle that is my understanding of the world snapped into place and I understood what was happening at a higher level. Concurrently, the world seemed to get gradually smaller. Things slowly began to no longer seem so cut and dry.
As I got older, I settled into a routine. I was always more risk adverse than my family. But I noticed that other people tended to have a lot more going on in their lives. Even my own family always had some new drama about money, a relationship issue, a new job, or a big move to a new place. I did predictable things like reading or playing video games. This went on for a very long time, but I always wondered in the back of my mind why they had such full (although not always positive) life experiences and I had spent a long time waiting for it to happen to me.
I tried to fix it. After spending over half a decade working the same job and living within the same routine, I changed jobs and moved states. For the first time in my life, I decided that something needed to happen, and I took the most drastic and uncomfortable action that I could at the time. For the next three months, I experienced the Time Dilation Vortex for the first time in my life.
Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Time Dilation Vortex is. You have to see it for yourself.
It’s so true. There are things that just don’t mean the same to you until you experience them for yourself. The best I can describe the next three months of my life is that it felt like a year. Living on my own for the first time, doing mundane tasks like shopping for a rug or hanging photos, I was constantly placed out of my comfort zone and I just had to deal with it. It was some of the most valuable experiences of my life (really quite sad, isn’t it?), and I have vivid memories of them that have lasted to this very day. But what really made this an interesting experiment was what happened later. After several months, it ultimately dissolved to normalcy and days were again flying by in routine.
How could I get it back? I was like an addict searching for a fix. Do I need to move again? I seriously considered moving across country. Around this time, it just so happens that I participated in my first Business Development activity at my company. Now I don’t know if you know what BD is, but essentially a client puts out a request for proposal (otherwise known as an RFP), and your team crafts a solution and writes up a proposal submission. This process is usually 30 days long. In this time, your team has to form, put a solution together, go through the full writing process (which includes outlining, graphics, rough draft, second draft, and final draft), as well as a whole host of other things, such as cost, data rights, licenses, bill of materials, basis of estimate. You get the picture. The final submission ends up being around 300 pages long. You work 80 hour weeks for a month straight. As you can imagine, they don’t get many volunteers, and the most you can expect to get out of it is a nice dinner or going to a nice suite at one of the local team’s baseball games.
What happened was unexpected, however. One week felt like a month. By the time the (completely stressful) experience was over, I felt like I had lived a year. I reflected on this experience and realized that in the process of working two weeks every week, I was getting sucked into the awesome and desirable effects of the Time Dilation Vortex. What was causing it? I decided that I had to do it again, and I did two more proposals like this over the next year (I swear I’m not a masochist). However, I still couldn’t figure out how the vortex worked.
A few posts back, I talked about procrastination. For the last 3.5 weeks I have religiously been planning my days. I create small, obtainable goals, or I break up the larger tasks into smaller ones. As a result, I have increased my life satisfaction and self-esteem because I can see tangible, successful task completion on a regular basis. I’m slowly working towards my goals and I’m doing it in a realistic, responsible manner.
Before I knew it, an amazing thing had happened. I’m back in the Time Dilation Vortex. For the first time in my life, I’m there, and I am not stressed out due to a proposal, and I didn’t make serious or drastic life changes. I’m living a fuller life and I never want to leave it again.
Was it moving states and experiencing it for the first time that taught me it was possible? Was it participating in the proposals? Or was it the procrastination realization that led to me being able to find my way back? I don’t know. But what I am sure of is that I would never have known about the vortex if I hadn’t experienced those occurrences. Even if someone tried to explain to me what it was, I would not have been able to believe that my mind had this super power of slowing time down.
I now realize that the reason my youth moved at such a slower pace was because I was experiencing all new things for the first time as a new person. This helped me to realize that you actually need to go out and do things on a regular basis to keep it happening into your adulthood. Some people naturally get this with all the drama or kids, but the rest of us have to work a little harder to make it happen. Make a schedule. Some people hate planning, but it really is the key to success. When you commit to something, do it. After all, those are the things most important to you, right?
If you try to find your way to the Time Dilation Vortex, then I wish you luck. Make sure to program in some off-time occasionally. It’s hard to keep going full tilt. And beware! It can have the unfortunate side-effect of making your days crawl sometimes. But without the risk, there is no reward.