How to time travel
Why does the journey home feel faster than the journey there? It seems that time has texture. Time can be coarse or smooth. Smooth time flows fast, coarse time flows slowly.
Time moves forward without me, but I can manipulate its grain. Doing so, I control the direction and speed of travel. I am a time machine with knobs and levers that can be adjusted.
The coarseness of time comes from the frequency and magnitude of memorable events on my path. Events can be as small as a pebble, or as large as a mountain itself stippled with notches and grooves and ruts. A life well-lived is a landscape of peaks and valleys.
To speed up time, I form routines. When I do the same thing, the same way, every day, time begins to blur. I squint and a field of bumps disappears into one dithered shade. The mind compresses repeat experiences. This serves a purpose: to make all the necessary maintenance flow more smoothly, so that I can apply my focus to the things that deserve it.
To slow down time, I do the opposite. Break up routines, try new things. More friction. More grain. New challenges, even small ones, cause unpredictable events. Pain is information. Traveling to new places forces me to encounter that friction. So does taking on a new skill or a new project.
The mind seems to continuously reassess the texture of time, and is easily saturated. Novelty can itself become routine. I notice this when I visit a big museum. After looking at hundreds of works in quick succession, a numbness sets in. Time begins to move faster again. I need a reset, or a new challenge.
I can slow down time through observation, by paying close attention to my senses. I analyze the subtle evolution of a moment, with as much granularity as possible. One second can be expanded into one hour, if I study it meticulously enough. I translate that moment into another medium — a journal entry, a photograph, a drawing. By creating these artifacts I become the architect of reconstructing moments at a pace I choose.
Going back in time requires some foresight. It starts with planting markers. I make a point of engraving experiences about the present. Meals, sounds, sights, and the artifacts I create about them. They become anchor points that I can return to. To synthesize the past, I surround myself with the artifacts I created about that time.
As I move forward, my perception of coarseness is re-evaluated with new events. What was once a mountain sometimes looks like a bump in the rear view mirror. My scars seem smaller the more I grow. I try to record how difficult things feel in the present, so that my future selves can have empathy for my current struggle. When I go back in time I want to reinhabit my past self with kindness.
It seems that I am always running out of time, but there are ways to create more time, or at least more usable time. Time that I can use in whatever way I choose. For example, a dishwasher is an investment that creates usable time.